Apprenticeships inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“The Public Accounts Committee will soon be examining the value derived from apprenticeships. The Department for Education has not set out how it will use the increase in apprenticeship numbers to deliver improvement in productivity, and how it will influence the mix of apprenticeships in order to deliver the most value, according to a recent National Audit Office report . The Department for Education has also not defined what 'success' will look like in the reformed programme. Research shows that different apprenticeships offer significantly different benefits, but the Department is not clear about how it plans to use this evidence to maximise the value derived from the mix of apprenticeships undertaken. In England, an apprenticeship is a full-time paid job, available to those aged 16 or over. It incorporates on and off-the-job training and leads to a nationally recognised certificate. Annual public funding of apprenticeships has grown over time. In 2010–11, it amounted to just under £1.2 billion, but by 2015–16 the figure had risen to around £1.5 billion. Since 2013, there has been a process to develop new, employer-led, apprenticeship 'standards', which will eventually replace the previous frameworks. National Audit Office report The National Audit Office report finds that many of the employers and training providers involved in designing and delivering apprenticeships support the principles behind the new standards, but more work is needed to raise awareness of them. In practice, the process of introducing the new standards has been resource-intensive and has taken longer than the Department envisaged. Employers involved in developing the new standards have expressed concern about the time they have to invest at their own expense. As at April 2016, only around 2,600 people had started an apprenticeship under the new standards.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
Successive governments have considered apprenticeships to be a key way of developing skills and improving productivity. The Department for Education (the Department) is managing the early stages of a complex transition process to make the apprenticeships programme more employer-led, including introducing a levy on larger employers and asking employer groups to design a new ‘standard’—a statement of the skills and knowledge to be acquired—for every apprenticeship. The Department’s only real success measure is to facilitate 3 million new apprenticeship starts between 2015 and 2020. The process for introducing the new set of apprenticeship standards appears to be slow, and the large number of new standards likely to be developed may be confusing for some sectors and employers. We are concerned that the introduction of the levy may incentivise some employers to exploit the system, for example by artificially routing other forms of training into apprenticeships or hiring apprentices as a way to avoid paying the minimum wage. This would diminish the potential benefits of the programme and damage its reputation.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 6 September 2016 to its close on 4 January 2018.
- Oral evidence 12 Oct 2016
- Report 30 Nov 2016
What it recommended
The committee's recommendations are not listed here yet. Read them in 28th Report – The apprenticeships programme ↗ on parliament.uk.
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 12 Oct 2016No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗