Start Them Young: BMW Is Teaching Five-Year-Olds About Cars

Forget learning your ABCs. BMW thinks five-year-olds should be figuring out what they want to do with the next 50-60 years of their lives. The automaker has launched a new initiative called Apprentice 2036 to get children interested in future careers much earlier. At the center of the campaign is The Spark Lab, a hands-on electric-vehicle engineering workshop for five- and six-year-olds. Because apparently building a Lego spaceship isn’t enough career preparation anymore.

BMW’s idea comes from research commissioned by its UK division involving 2,500 parents. Among 2,000 parents of children aged 4-18 who had already started thinking about their kids’ future working lives, 58% said they began doing so during primary school. The 4-to-6 age group was the most common, selected by 30% of respondents.

That’s a pretty big shift compared with parents of young adults. Half of the 500 parents surveyed whose children are now 19-24 said they didn’t start thinking about careers until their offspring were between 15 and 18. Meanwhile, 38% said they now wish they had started earlier. However, BMW isn’t asking kindergarteners to choose between engineering and accounting just yet.

Start Them Young

The Spark Lab is designed to expose them to technology, engineering and the workplace through practical activities. Year 1 pupils from Grazeley Church of England Primary School visited the BMW Group Academy UK near Reading. Once they got there, they learned about EVs, batteries and charging before designing their own electric cars. Naturally, there was plenty of Lego involved.

The campaign is also meant to address parents’ uncertainty about what the workplace will look like by 2036. According to BMW’s research, 78% believe artificial intelligence will significantly change the jobs available to their children. About 49% of those surveyed admitted they don’t know which skills those children will need to succeed. Another 63% believe it will be harder for kids to find a job in 10 years than it is today.

And if you’re wondering why BMW is suddenly interested in the career plans of children who are still several years away from losing all their baby teeth, there’s an obvious business angle. Children starting school now could be applying for apprenticeships in 2036. BMW Group UK currently has nearly 500 apprentices, covering everything from automotive technology and manufacturing to engineering, marketing and communications. Since 2016, the company says it has supported more than 3,300 apprentices across its UK operations and retailer network.

Parents Want Their Kids To Visit More Workplaces

The research also found that 76% of parents want primary-school children to have more opportunities to visit workplaces and get practical experience with subjects such as engineering and technology. On potential career paths, 48% would like their children to attend university. At the same time, 39% would consider an apprenticeship and 35% would favor going straight into full-time employment.

BMW says its apprenticeships offer a salary from day one, with some Level 6 degree apprenticeships allowing participants to earn a degree without taking on student debt.

There’s certainly logic in introducing children to different types of work early, particularly as AI and rapid technological change make it harder to predict what jobs will even exist in a decade. BMW’s future-of-work expert Christine Armstrong stresses that the idea isn’t to make a five-year-old pick a career, but to let children discover what interests them. Still, there’s something wonderfully 2026 about parents apparently having to worry about their kid’s career before they’ve even mastered tying their shoes. At eight, my daughter still struggles with the latter, though she has already chosen her career path.

And who knows what the workplace will look like by 2036? Maybe today’s five-year-olds will be designing the next generation of electric BMWs. Maybe they’ll be telling their own kids that they were lucky enough to grow up before every job was handed over to AI. Or, more optimistically, perhaps they’ll just be building cars while the robots do all the paperwork.

Assuming, of course, the robots haven’t decided by then that humans are the problem…