With National Apprenticeship Week (NAW) 2025 encouraging everyone to consider and celebrate how apprenticeships and skills help individuals develop rewarding careers, Campaign Collective continues to pledge its support to the next generation of communicators through its ongoing work on the Public Relations & Communications Assistant (PR&CA) Apprenticeship.
As the newly revised version 1.1 of this standard gets underway, half of the Collective’s core Membership – Sarah Colombini, Delia Antoine Burdett, Ian Morton, Nancy Platts and Nicola Putnam – now work as assessors or coaches for the PR&CA Apprenticeship, alongside their day-to-day communications work.
Sarah Colombini, Founder Member of Campaign Collective said, “We absolutely believe that apprentices can’t be what they can’t see, so as well as being assessors, we want to be visible to them as PR professionals, to inspire them as they start out on their careers. Our Members have experience across all communications disciplines, ranging from the smallest campaigns to the most high-profile issues and can bring the benefit of that experience to their work with PR&CA apprentices.”
The communications sector is a dynamic and ever-evolving creative industry that relies on new talent and the new PR&CA standard has been fully updated to meet the needs of employers in an increasingly digital world, with a focus on building, protecting and maintaining a positive reputation for brands, organisations and individuals. Developed by the Apprenticeship Trailblazer Group, which represents leading UK organisations, businesses and communications consultancies, and guided by the new standard also benefits from a 37.5 per cent increase in funding for training providers from the Department for Education, the standard was launched by IfATE in 2024.
Campaign Collective was one of the organisations that contributed to the new standard, alongside the Cabinet Office, TALA, Mitie, ADPR, Wessex Water, Department for Education, Valuable 500 and Westco Communications. Training providers and assessors, including the PRCA, The JGA Group, Press Association and AIM were also closely involved.
As a Public Relations and Communications Assistant, the apprentice will build relationships with different audiences through their daily work, to communicate messages and influence opinions and behaviour in the most effective way for their organisation. The standard outlines specific knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) that an apprentice can work towards, and now includes risk assessment methodologies and approaches to mitigate or manage reputational impact and implementation of crisis plans.
Towards the end of the 19-month apprenticeship there is an end-point assessment for all Public Relations and Communications Assistants.
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You can find out more information about the new Public Relations and Communications Assistant Apprenticeships here.