Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the apprenticeship levy in facilitating the training of apprentices in academy chains.

As with other parts of the public sector, the department will be monitoring the uptake of apprenticeships by the school workforce. Public sector bodies in scope of the public sector apprenticeships target – including schools – are required to publish annually and report to the department on their progress towards the target. The first reports (covering the period 1 April 2017 – 31 March 2018) are due by 30 September 2018.

In February 2018, we published our latest assessment of costs schools incur, including the financial impact of the apprenticeship levy. We estimate that over 16,000 schools (three quarters of the total) will pay a combined apprenticeship levy of around £110 million.