Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the cost to schools has been of the Apprenticeship Levy; and how many apprentices have been trained in schools since the levy was introduced.

In February 2018, we published an assessment of costs that schools incur, including the financial impact of the apprenticeship levy. We estimated that over 16,000 schools (three quarters of the total) would pay a combined apprenticeship levy of around £110 million.

The assessment can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/678439/Schools_costs_technical_note.pdf.

As reported in the statistics publication ‘Public sector apprenticeships in England: 2017 to 2018’: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-sector-apprenticeships-in-england-2017-to-2018, there were approximately 6,300 apprenticeship starts in schools between May 2017 and March 2018. Many of these apprenticeship starts will be funded by the apprenticeship levy directly or via local government. Around half of the 6,300 starts were in local authority maintained schools.