Apprenticeships

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is right, in that we are moving towards a new framework. We want to improve quality, which is why we are giving employers the opportunity to design apprenticeships that are more demanding and responsive to the needs of business, looking to have more rigorous testing and grading at the end of an apprenticeship, and giving employers control of funding so that they can become more demanding customers. That way, both employers and young people involved in apprenticeships get the quality training that we all want to see.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I have rather lost track of the number of times the Minister has talked about ambition. Of course we support the ambition to have 3 million apprenticeships and we wish her well with that. However, is not the problem that currently, 96% of apprenticeships are at levels 2 and 3? These are obviously important to the service sector and associated sectors, but as she has said, we have to provide routes through to degree level. Where is that coming from?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord will be aware that we have introduced higher and degree level apprenticeships, and I am sure he will be delighted to know that in fact, higher apprenticeships are the fastest growing element of the apprenticeship programme. Through our national colleges we will be delivering specialist technical skills training at levels 4 and 6, and by 2020 we expect them to be delivering training to around 21,000 learners. We are focusing on higher and degree level apprenticeships, and it is a fast-growing area.