Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment his Department has made of the likelihood of achieving three million apprenticeship starts by 2020; and if he will make a statement.

We publish progress on the number of apprenticeships starts within the department’s further education and skills statistical first release, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/further-education-and-skills-statistical-first-release-sfr#2017-releases. The latest release was published on 25 January 2018.

There have been over 1.2 million apprenticeship starts since May 2015 and we plan to achieve three million apprenticeship starts in England by 2020.