Apprentices

(asked on 26th April 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the Government’s progress on delivering three million apprenticeships by 2020; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Anne Milton Portrait
Anne Milton
This question was answered on 7th May 2019

In 2015 we set an ambitious goal of 3 million high quality apprenticeships by 2020 and that remains our ambition, but we will not sacrifice quality to meet this figure. We have introduced a wide range of reforms to apprenticeships to improve their quality and to encourage employers across England to increase the number of apprenticeships that they offer.

There have been 1,709,500 apprenticeship starts in England between May 2015 and January 2019.

We regularly report on progress toward the target in our apprenticeships and traineeships publications, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-apprenticeships.

To support all employers to make the long-term, sustainable investment in training, in April 2019 we halved the co-investment rate from 10% to 5% for new starts and have increased the amount that levy-paying employers can transfer to other employers from 10% to 25%.

We are working to raise awareness of apprenticeships across the country and the benefits that they bring to both employers and apprentices. Our ‘Fire It Up’ communication campaign seeks to change the way that people think about apprenticeships and to demonstrate that apprenticeships are an aspirational choice for anyone.

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