Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reasons the Education and Skills Funding Agency did not award non-levy apprenticeship contracts to all (a) good and (b) outstanding specialist training providers and colleges in its recent procurement.

The procurement was conducted in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

Contracts for the delivery of non-levy apprenticeship training were not awarded on the basis of Ofsted ratings, but on the basis of an Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) assessment of information supplied by providers against a defined set of criteria. As set out in the Invitation to Tender, the ESFA did not make initial offers of awards where providers did not meet the Award Threshold, which is the minimum score, or where the total contract value was below the minimum award of £200,000.