Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to embed financial education and investment literacy in apprenticeship programmes.

Apprenticeships are jobs that equip learners with the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need for a specific occupation. Employers, working in conjunction with Skills England, develop the content of apprenticeship standards according to the needs of their industries. This will include job-specific mathematics or English skills wherever relevant.

In addition, the department funds apprentices to achieve up to level 2 qualifications in mathematics and English as part of their apprenticeship. The qualifications give apprentices the broader skills they need to thrive in work and life and the mathematics qualification includes content on calculating interest, discounts and percentage increases/decreases, probability and budgeting, as well as building confidence with numbers more generally. We require all 16 to 18-year-olds to achieve a level 1 or level 2 qualification as part of their apprenticeship, if they do not already hold one.