Ask most 15-year-olds what a career in construction actually involves, and the answer usually stops at "building things." Ask them about becoming a quantity surveyor, an M&E project manager, or a site engineer, and the blank looks start. It isn't that young people lack interest in practical, well-paid, hands-on careers. Recent research suggests the opposite. It's that the system meant to introduce them to those options is still, in large part, failing to do so.

The appetite is there. The information isn't.

The most striking thing about the latest research into young people's attitudes isn't reluctance, it's enthusiasm undermined by a lack of information. Enginuity's 2026 Vocational Attitudes Survey found more than nine in ten young people would now consider an apprenticeship over a university degree, with "earn while you learn" the single biggest reason both young people and parents give for backing vocational routes. The appetite for practical, paid career pathways has never been higher.

But the same research points to a persistent gap in how that appetite is being met. Around four in ten parents and young people say they need more information to actually navigate their options, and the regional picture makes the problem harder to dismiss as a one-off: in the North East and East Midlands specifically, strong interest in apprenticeships sits alongside weaker reported exposure to vocational pathways in schools. In other words, demand is rising faster than the advice needed to act on it.

The policy is there too. Implementation is the problem.

This isn't a new realisation for government. The Baker Clause, introduced in 2018 and strengthened through the Provider Access Legislation in 2023, legally requires state secondary schools to give technical education and apprenticeship providers access to pupils in Years 8 to 13. The Gatsby Benchmarks, adopted as the government's official framework for good careers guidance, are now used across more than 4,700 secondary schools, colleges and training providers.

On paper, the infrastructure for good careers advice already exists. In practice, enforcement has been the sticking point for years, and the government's own updated guidance, published in June 2026, effectively admits it. From September 2026, schools are expected to provide young people with a week's worth of work experience activities during Years 7 to 9, and a full week's work experience placement during Years 10 and 11, guidance that explicitly calls for that experience to be "meaningful," with genuine employer interaction rather than a token exercise. Separately, from October 2026, the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus are being merged into a single jobs and careers service, an attempt to simplify a landscape that, by the Association of Colleges' own account, currently spreads responsibility for careers advice across several different, only loosely coordinated organisations.

None of this suggests government doesn't understand the problem. It suggests the problem has been understood, restated and partially legislated against for close to a decade, while still not being fully solved.

Why construction specifically loses out.

Careers advice failing generally is one problem. Construction has some specific reasons it tends to lose out even within a flawed system. Careers advisors in schools are disproportionately more familiar with academic and office-based career routes than they are with technical trades, simply because that's the path most of them took themselves. A school able to arrange a work experience placement at a local office is often better resourced to do so than one trying to place a student on an active construction site, where health and safety requirements, insurance and site access add real friction that a classroom placement doesn't.

There's also a visibility problem that compounds the information gap. Construction doesn't get a "careers day" stall the way more office-based industries typically do, and the sheer range of roles inside it, from site-based trades through to quantity surveying, commercial management, digital engineering and executive leadership, rarely gets communicated as a single, connected career landscape. A student who isn't interested in bricklaying may never be told that the same industry also needs structural engineers, project managers and finance professionals, and simply rules construction out entirely on a false premise.

What "meaningful" work experience actually requires.

The DfE's new emphasis on meaningful, employer-linked work experience is genuinely significant, if it's delivered properly. For construction, that means placements need real site or office exposure, a named point of contact, and enough structure that a student leaves understanding what the day-to-day of a role actually looks like, not a token half-day watching from a distance. It also means employers have to be willing partners, because schools cannot deliver on the requirement in isolation. The Baker Clause already gives training providers and employers a legal right of access to pupils; the barrier has rarely been the law, it's been employers and schools actually connecting and following through.

What this means for the industry.

For construction businesses, this is a genuine opportunity, not just a policy problem to watch from the sidelines. The appetite among young people is demonstrably there, the legal access to talk to them already exists, and government is now actively pushing schools to deliver more structured, meaningful work experience from this September. Businesses that build real relationships with local schools and colleges, offering structured placements, genuine site exposure and career talks that go beyond the trades people picture first, are positioned to benefit directly from a system that's finally being pushed to work harder on the supply side.

The takeaway.

The gap between how many young people are open to a construction career and how many actually end up pursuing one isn't really about attitude. It's about information, and specifically, about who's in the room early enough to provide it. Careers advice hasn't failed construction because young people don't want practical, well-paid careers. It's failed construction because too few of them have been shown, clearly and early enough, what those careers actually look like.

At Caval, we work with businesses across every division on exactly this challenge, helping build the pipeline of talent that starts long before a CV ever reaches a recruiter, at the point where a 15-year-old is still deciding what "a career in construction" might even mean.