Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will set a target for (a) disabled and (b) autistic people within the overall Government target of the number of apprenticeships.

We are delivering all of the recommendations made by the Maynard taskforce and expect to have fully implemented them by April 2018. The recommendations focused on a range of disabilities, including autism. We expect the actions taken to improve access to and completion of apprenticeships for a broad range of people with learning difficulties and disabilities, including those with autism.

Alongside our work to implement the recommendations of the taskforce, in March 2017 we announced a new disability success measure to increase the proportion of apprenticeships starts by people with learning difficulties and disabilities by 20% by 2020 in our Apprenticeship Reform Programme: Benefits Realisation document. Whilst we have not limited success measures for specific groups with learning difficulties and disabilities, for example, individuals with autism, we expect our work on implementing the recommendations and working towards achieving our success measures to have an impact on a broad range of people with different learning difficulties and disabilities.

Data is not collected in such a way as to be able to identify apprentices with autism. Achievements for those apprentices that have declared a learning difficulty or disability for the 2013/14 and 2014/15 academic years can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/504335/apprenticeships-achievements-by-geography-learner-demographics-and-sector-subject-area.xls. Data for the 2015/16 academic year will be published in due course.