Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much money was allocated to Carillion plc from the public purse to deliver apprenticeships in 2017-18.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) only fund apprentices in England. The funding for apprentices, and the collection of data regarding apprentices, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a matter for the devolved administrations.

Table 1 (attached) details the region for each apprentice who was participating in learning at the end of December 2017 (R05 data).

2016/17 apprenticeship allocations for Carillion Construction can be found in Table 2 (attached).

2017/18 apprenticeship allocations are currently confidential due to its commercial sensitivity.

Carillion is the second largest provider of construction apprenticeships in England and has 11 training centres across England. The ESFA currently fund Carillion to deliver apprenticeships to 1,118 (R05 data) of their own employees, over 90% of which are 16-18 years old. The department also funds them to deliver other training funded through our Adult education budget (there are 11 in learning) and 16-19 Study Programmes (195 in learning).

Following the announcement on 15 January 2018, regarding the collapse of Carillion, the ESFA have made contingency plans and identified The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) as the best placed alternative provider. CITB are on the ESFA’s register of approved apprenticeship training providers; deliver quality provision with a track record of delivering the specific frameworks/standards that current Carillion apprentices are studying. CITB centres are situated within what is anticipated to be a reasonable travel time for the apprentices; and they have the capacity and capability to take on the transferring apprentices and study programme learners. The CITB will work with their established network of college partners to support all the apprentices and other learners to complete their programmes.

The CITB will use their existing employer contacts in the sector and the grant incentives they have available to find alternative employers for the apprentices to complete their frameworks or standards. A team of 50 advisers and assessors in the CITB will be available immediately to contact the apprentices and support them to find new employers. The ESFA contacted all affected apprentices on 15 January to notify them of the situation and next steps and the ‘Study Programme Learners’ will also be notified by letter on the 17 January. Affected learners have been provided with the details of a dedicated mailbox where they can raise any issues or concerns.

CITB will be contacting affected learners during the coming days to begin the transfer process with a focus on minimising disruption to the learner.