Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that young people are aware of the availability of apprenticeships in a range of sectors in the context of the finding from the Association of Accounting Technicians that 34 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds believe that apprenticeships are only available for manual labour.

Apprenticeships provide people with the opportunity to earn and learn the skills needed to start an exciting career in a wide range of industries, everything from artificial intelligence, archaeology, data science, business management and banking. We want more young people to benefit from high-quality apprenticeships.

To encourage more young people to consider apprenticeships, we are promoting apprenticeships in schools and colleges through our Apprenticeship Support & Knowledge programme. This free service provides resources and interventions to help better educate young people about apprenticeships and has reached over 2 million students across England since its introduction in the 2016/17 academic year.

In January 2021, we announced the introduction of a three-point plan to enforce provider access legislation. This requires that all maintained schools and academies provide opportunities for providers of technical education and apprenticeships to visit schools for the purpose of informing year 8-13 pupils about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships. This plan includes creating clear minimum legal requirements, specifying who is to be given access to which pupils and when. This is an important step towards real choice for every pupil.

The National Careers Service, a free, government-funded careers information, advice and guidance service draws on a range of labour market information to support and guide individuals. The National Careers Service is impartial, and careers guidance is tailored to individual needs. Young people aged 13 to 18 can access ongoing in-depth information, advice and guidance from the service via a helpline, webchat or the National Careers Service website.

In February during National Apprenticeship Week, I wrote to all year 11, 12 and 13 pupils and their parents to tell them about the great opportunities offered through apprenticeships.

We offer guidance and support to young people who are considering applying for apprenticeships through our apprenticeship website: https://www.apprenticeships.gov.uk/, which explains the application stages in a step-by-step process. Students can search for new apprenticeship opportunities on our Find an Apprenticeship (FAA) service, over 19,000 apprenticeship vacancies were advertised on the FAA service in November 2021, details of which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/apply-apprenticeship.