Recommendation 17

We asked how DfE was ensuring that the incentives for employers to take part in training programmes, particularly traineeships and DWP’s Kickstart scheme were working effectively. Kickstart was launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and funded employers to create jobs for people aged 16 to 24. DfE told us that an apprenticeship was quite different from a traineeship or a place on the Kickstart scheme, but conceded that there had been some overlap between its traineeships programme and Kickstart. It suggested that this had come about partly because of departments responding rapidly to the COVID-19 pandemic. It noted that Kickstart had now wound down and it was working with DWP to feed people into the right routes for the right things. It emphasised that it was focused on getting incentives right so that employers were investing in programmes that had obvious value to them, such as apprenticeships. It explained that there were more incentives of free offers where it was asking employers to take more of a risk to try to help an individual enter the labour market for the first time.23