As banks contemplate apprenticeships for school leavers, they're also going out of their way to attract the attention of A level students who might join as graduates

In the olden days, banks were notoriously full of traders who'd left school at 16 and brought hard-edged commercial skills to the floor. Today, however, trading floors are populated by PhDs and mathematicians.

For investment banks to hire non-graduates would therefore seem a retrograde step. However, they're thinking about precisely this - although they're not thinking of hiring them into trading roles.

At our roundtable for banks' heads of recruitment this week, there was a definite interest in hiring school leavers through apprenticeships for back office positions. It's seen as a 'politically correct' option and a way of broadening employee diversity.

The Financial Services Skills Partnership already runs apprenticeships for people interested in working in financial services, but many of the banks it works with are in the retail sector. The apprenticeship concept is more evolved in the Big Four. E&Y launched a new school leaver schemelast August, with 60 places for students to join straight after A levels. The scheme is thought to have been massively oversubscribed.

Most investment banks stipulate a degree for their junior hires. However, this isn't preventing them from attempting to attract the attention of future graduate hires whilst they're still at school. JPMorgan, for example, runs a schools programme and will be inviting applications with a deadline of April 29th. Goldman Sachs runs a programme for A level girls and RBS runs several A level insights days.