Employment: Young People

(asked on 5th July 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment the Government has made of the potential effect of the outcome of the EU referendum on (a) education and training opportunities for and (b) future employment prospects of 16 to 20 year olds.


Answered by
 Portrait
Nick Boles
This question was answered on 14th July 2016

The result of the EU referendum has raised many questions, for all our stakeholders and citizens. However, nothing changes in the immediate term. We will continue taking forward the important legislation that we set before Parliament in the Queen’s Speech, including the Higher Education and Research Bill. We will also continue with our further education reform programme.

On Friday 8 July we published the Post-16 Skills Plan. This is our long-term, ambitious framework to support young people and adults to secure a lifetime of sustained skilled employment and meet the needs of rapidly changing economy by putting employers in the lead. The reforms set out in the Skills Plan, which are based on the findings an independent expert panel chaired by Lord Sainsbury, are just as critical following the EU referendum result.

Our priority will be to work with both the further education and higher education sectors to fully understand the impact of the referendum and help shape our approach for higher and further education in the coming months. We will also continue to focus on high quality apprenticeships and remain committed to 3m starts by 2020.

The employment prospects for our young people are good - the labour market for young people is the strongest it has been for almost 10 years with the employment rate for the 4 million 16-24s not in full-time education being 74.3%.

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