Trades and skilled making
Trades run on apprenticeships, portfolios of real work, and reputation — university barely features, and pretending otherwise wastes years. What matters: evidence of making and fixing real things, basic maths that the licensing exams actually require, work habits an employer can call someone about, and an apprenticeship secured, which is itself competitive in the good trades.
How old is your child?
Real projects: build the shed shelf, service the bike, wire the lamp with someone qualified watching. A portfolio of photographs starts. The maths kept up, because electrical and plumbing licensing exams are maths exams in disguise.
What most families do instead.
Families treat trades as the no-preparation option, then discover good apprenticeships take one applicant in ten and choose on evidence. The portfolio and the reference are cheap to build from thirteen and almost nobody builds them.
What the record looks like after two years on this path.
- A photographed portfolio of things made and fixed
- Maths level tracked, aimed at the licensing requirement
- Work done for people outside the family, with a referee
- The trade chosen by trying more than one
The portfolio, built
Photographs of real work, dated — the evidence apprenticeship applications actually read.
The maths, kept honest
Licensing exams are maths exams. Assessments keep the level where it needs to be.
Show meSomeone in the trade
A working tradesperson to describe the money, the hours and the path honestly.
Show meWhat to do this month.
- 1
Photograph everything already made or fixed and start the portfolio.
- 2
Find one real job for a neighbour — the first outside reference starts there.
Sign up and the first conversation already knows the direction. The plan Cora builds is aimed at it from day one.
A path your child has not chosen will not survive the work. We build toward the direction you have in mind by getting your child genuinely interested in it — that is not a softer version of the goal, it is the only version that arrives.
And if they change direction at sixteen, the record survives it. Finishing things, building things, working with people — the evidence transfers.