Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that they meet their target of creating three million apprenticeships by 2020.

In 2015, we set an ambitious goal of three million high quality apprenticeship starts, which remains our ambition. The government’s apprenticeship reforms are delivering high quality apprenticeships that will lead to a more skilled and productive economy. We will not sacrifice quality for quantity in creating these starts.

Our reforms place employers at the heart of designing apprenticeships and the standards that they create are at the centre of our reforms to create a world-class system. The shift to higher quality standards with a longer average duration, together with the 20% off-the-job training requirement and the drop-off in frameworks, has already contributed to a 25% rise in expected apprenticeship training hours in the first half of 2017-18. In 2017-18, we saw the proportion of starts on new high quality standards rise to 44%, in comparison to just 5% in 2016-17. We also saw continued growth of apprenticeship starts at higher levels, from level 4 onwards, where starts increased by almost 32% in 2017-18 compared to 2016-17.

We are working closely with employers to help them take advantage of these changes to grow their apprenticeship programmes and to contribute to meeting our target, backed by increased investment as announced in this year’s budget. We are reducing the apprenticeship co-investment rate from 10% to 5% in 2019. Also, from next year, large levy-paying employers will be able to transfer 25% of the funds entering their account each year to fund apprenticeships at other employers. By 2019-20, the annual spending on apprenticeships in England will reach £2.5 billion which, in monetary terms, is double what it was in 2010-11.

To unlock these new apprenticeship starts, we are promoting apprenticeships to young people and their parents and teachers, as well as to prospective employers, to make sure that they are aware of the potential of apprenticeships to develop skills and to increase earnings and improve life chances.