Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to promote the take-up of degree-level apprenticeships in the London Borough of Havering.

Degree level apprenticeships offer excellent opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds. Employers have designed over 170 high quality, degree level apprenticeship standards to support them in developing the skilled workforces they need.

It is great to see that there were 46,800 degree level apprenticeship starts in the 2022/23 academic year, which is an increase of 8.2% on 2021/22, of which 260 starts were by learners living in the Havering local authority area.

The department would like to further accelerate the growth of higher and degree apprenticeships and encourage higher education providers to expand their existing offers or develop new ones. An additional £40 million is being invested over the next two years to support degree apprenticeship providers to expand and to help more people access this provision, on top of the department’s £8 million investment in 2022/23.

Apprenticeships are also continually being promoted in schools and colleges through the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge programme. The programme had a reach of 640,000 interactions with young people in over 2,400 schools in 2022/23 and is supported by £3.2 million of funding annually.