Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of trends in the level of BAME Further Education (a) students and (b) college leaders.

Government is clear that all learners from all backgrounds must benefit from our education and training policies. Our latest FE trends participation data (August 2011 to July 2019) shows that whilst the total number of people in further education in England fell, during the same period, the percentage of people in further education from Asian, Black, Mixed, and Other ethnic groups increased from 19.3% to 22.6%.

We have exceeded our target to increase the proportion of apprentices from ethnic minority backgrounds starting apprenticeships. 14.3% of starts in 2020/21 were by people of Black Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, compared to 13.3% in 2019/20. We continue to raise awareness in schools through our ASK programme to support young people into apprenticeships and The Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network promotes diversity in apprenticeships including encouraging more from ethnic minorities into key sectors with historic under-representation.

We are supporting the largest-ever expansion of traineeships as part of the government’s Plan for Jobs to ensure that more young people have access to high-quality training. Since their introduction in the 2013/14 academic year (AY), the diversity record on traineeships has shown steady improvement, with around one third of starts being from ethnic minority backgrounds in 2020/21.

We also provide extra funding for colleges to support the most disadvantaged students with low prior attainment or living in deprived areas and provide learner support for disadvantaged students to help them overcome barriers to learning.

We have been working with a number of representative bodies in the Further Education sector to strengthen leadership and governance, including through greater diversity. We recognise the importance of having a diverse and representative workforce, and have funded the Education and Training Foundation to deliver a range of programmes designed to increase the diversity of leaders and managers. We have also committed to a new mandatory annual data collection in FE, which will uncover a large range of characteristics of the workforce, including ethnicity, which will provide a robust picture of the ethnic makeup of the workforce.