Employers including Pret A Manger, Heathrow Airport and the NHS are offering teenagers “virtual work experience”, claiming to provide them with “essential skills” to enter the job market. The online courses, provided by a platform called Springpod, are said to give teenagers the “relevant skills” to land careers in construction, engineering, midwifery and nursing, as well as in the hospitality industry. But despite these sectors traditionally involving manual or customer-facing work, the programme is completed entirely from home, without young people stepping foot in the workplace. Photographs on the Springpod website depict young people sitting in bed or on the floor of their bedrooms on their phones and laptops undertaking the courses. Heathrow Airport’s virtual construction work experience course, which is open to anyone over the age of 16, involves “fun quizzes and thought-provoking activities, like managing a challenging project”, while students also cover topics like “diversity and inclusion, sustainability and tackling Covid-19”. Pret A Manger’s work experience is advertised as “an immersive journey into product development” where students are given the chance to design their own product for the company, which could fast-track them onto a Pret apprenticeship. Meanwhile, several NHS trusts offer virtual midwife and nursing work experience,...