National Retraining Scheme

(asked on 22nd July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress is being made on the roll-out of the National Retraining Scheme; how many people (a) that scheme has been rolled out to and (b) have taken up that scheme; and which locations that scheme has been rolled out to.


Answered by
Gillian Keegan Portrait
Gillian Keegan
Secretary of State for Education
This question was answered on 2nd September 2020

We have taken a user centred, test and learn approach to developing the National Retraining Scheme, starting small and developing products iteratively. Through this approach we have introduced the first part of the scheme, Get Help to Retrain, alongside developing other areas such as online training and in-work technical training.

Get Help to Retrain helps users to understand their current skills, explore alternative occupations that they could do and find and sign up to the training they need to access opportunities for a broad range of good jobs.

We started testing the digital service in the Liverpool City Region in July 2019, and have since improved the service and rolled out to eligible users in five further areas: West Midlands, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, North East, Leeds, and Heart of the South West. To date, over 2,700 users have accessed Get Help to Retrain.

Due to the current circumstances, including the COVID-19 outbreak, we are reviewing what the implications could be in terms of the development and roll out of Get Help to Retrain. We are developing our approach for the National Retraining Scheme in the context of the new National Skills Fund and other reforms to adult skills funding and provision and we will provide a further update in due course.

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