Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made on the extent to which the new apprenticeship standards are closing the skills gap in sectors such as engineering, facilities management and construction.

The department continues to monitor apprenticeships market performance including levels of starts by sector subject areas such as Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies as well as Construction, Planning and the Built Environment. In the first quarter of this academic year we have seen particular growth in the number of starts at Level 4 and above in Engineering and Manufacturing, in comparison to the same period last year.

Quality is at the heart of our changes to apprenticeships and new employer-designed high quality standards are replacing frameworks to ensure apprenticeships meet employers’ needs and address national skills shortages.

Employers are taking on the standards rapidly - there were 40,900 apprenticeship starts on the new apprenticeship standards for quarter one of the 2017/18 academic year – more than the whole of last year combined. This represents 36% of all starts in the first quarter of this year compared to 3.1% in the same period the previous year, and much quicker growth than expected - showing that employers are moving to the new higher quality offer.

Higher quality training leads to increased productivity; of the new standards approved, 37 are standards in construction and engineering-related occupations and in Facilities Management. Around 300 more standards are in development, including more than 100 in construction and engineering and three more in Facilities Management occupations.