Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to increase the number of seafarer apprentices.

Employers are at the heart of our reforms to apprenticeships, which include designing high-quality standards that deliver the skills that employers need and determining which apprenticeships employers offer and when they offer them. Over 550 employer-designed standards are now available and standards developed by the maritime sector include Able Seafarer at level 2, Maritime Operations Officer at level 3 and Marine Pilot at level 5. We announced in October 2018 that all new starts would be on these high-quality standards from 1 August 2020 and almost 75% of new apprenticeship starts are now on standards.

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we have introduced a broad range of flexibilities, including encouraging the remote delivery of apprenticeships, in order to ensure that apprentices can continue with their learning as far as possible and to support the continued take up of apprenticeships by employers. The Marine Pilot Standard is one of the standards where flexibilities to the end point assessment have been agreed.

Apprenticeships will have an important role to play in creating employment opportunities, particularly for young people, and in supporting employers in all sectors to access the skilled workforce that they need to recover and grow, following the COVID-19 outbreak. We are looking to support employers of all sizes, and particularly smaller businesses, to take on new apprentices this year. We will set out further details in due course. We will also ensure that there is sufficient funding to support small businesses that want to take on an apprentice this year.