Apprentices

(asked on 10th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to promote apprenticeships in (a) Haltemprice and Howden constituency, (b) Yorkshire and the Humber and (c) the UK.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 18th February 2020

We have introduced a wide range of reforms to apprenticeships to improve their quality and to encourage employers across England to increase the number of apprenticeships they offer.

Since May 2010, there have been 4,392,000 starts in England. Of these, 6,930 apprenticeships starts have been in Haltemprice and Howden and 535,420 in Yorkshire and the Humber.

We are raising the profile of our apprenticeship programme through wider communications and marketing activity. The third phase of the Fire it Up campaign was launched in January, targeting important audience groups that are central to widening participation in apprenticeships.

Our thirteenth annual National Apprenticeship Week took place this month (3 to 9 February). Nearly 900 events were held across the country to celebrate and promote the diversity and value that apprenticeships bring to employers, apprentices and communities across England today.

In addition, in January 2018, we introduced a legal requirement for schools to give colleges or other organisations providing further education or training, the opportunity to make pupils aware about technical qualifications and apprenticeships.

We also offer a free service to schools through the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) project to ensure that teachers have the knowledge and support to enable them to promote apprenticeships to their students. In the last academic year, the ASK Programme reached over 300,000 students.

We are investing £2.5 billion in apprenticeships this year (2019-20) so that employers of all sizes across England can provide apprenticeship opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds. We are moving smaller employers onto our award-winning apprenticeship service to give them a greater choice of where their apprentices are trained, and so that they can also benefit from transferred funds from levy payers. Levy transfers can help to support new starts in supply chains and address local skills needs.

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