Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what (1) number, and (2) percentage, of apprenticeship completions in England in 2022 were in occupations listed in the Migration Advisory Committee's shortage occupation list for that year.

The department does not publish apprenticeship starts and achievements by occupation but can use occupational maps from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to estimate occupation for apprenticeship standards. The occupational maps can be found here: https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/occupational-maps/what-are-the-occupational-maps/.

In the 2021/22 academic year there were 68,400 starts on apprenticeship standards relating to occupations on the ‘Skilled Worker visa: shortage occupations’ list. The list can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-shortage-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-shortage-occupations. These starts represent 20% of all starts on apprenticeship standards. There were 24,300 achievements of apprenticeship standards on the list, representing 21% of all achievements on apprenticeship standards.

Note:

• Figures are likely to be an underestimate. The occupational maps as published by IfATE relate each apprenticeship standard to the single occupation considered the closest match. This means some apprenticeships that might relate to more than one occupation, will not be identified as relevant.
• Apprenticeships have been mapped to the shortage occupations list solely by the IfATE occupational maps. The department does not have the information to align to the shortage occupations list further (for instance the department cannot identify the subject that an apprentice teacher specialises in).
• The ‘Skilled Worker visa: shortage occupations’ list is the version updated on 15 February 2022.