Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to provide (a) skills and (b) training to help support the UK manufacturing of small satellites; and if he will make a statement.

We recently published the White Paper, Skills for Jobs: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth. This is focused on giving people the skills they need, in a way that suits them, so they can get great jobs in sectors the economy needs and boost this country’s productivity.

A key focus of the White Paper is making the skills systems more responsive to employer skill needs both locally and nationally. Building on the success of our flagship apprenticeships programme, we are putting employers at the heart of the system so education and training meets their needs. Through employer engagement, we have transformed apprenticeships from a second-rate option to a prestigious opportunity to train with leading employers and get a well-paid job. Our new apprenticeships system includes a Space Engineering Technician apprenticeship that covers the design and manufacture of satellites and the components and subsystems they comprise, along with production, operation and maintenance of the highly specialised ground support equipment used to support development and testing of satellites before launch. It has been developed by employers including Airbus Defence & Space, BAE Systems, Thales Alenia Space UK Ltd, Nammo Westcott Ltd, Reaction Engines Ltd, Oxford Space Systems, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and several others.

Alongside apprenticeships, by 2030, almost all technical courses will be based on employer-led standards, ensuring that the education and training people receive are directly linked to the skills needed for jobs.

A key part of our plans is to provide the advanced technical and higher technical skills the nation needs including, for example, in satellite production. We are doing this by expanding our flagship Institutes of Technology programme to every part of the country by the end of this Parliament to spearhead the increase in higher-level technical skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. We will also continue to roll out T Levels, which prepare students for entry into skilled employment or higher levels of technical study, including apprenticeships. We are reforming higher technical education with a new approval system based on employer-led standards and are creating clear progression routes for students towards the higher-level technical qualifications that employers need.

We are also funding the High-Value Manufacturing Catapult’s ‘Skills Value Chain’. This process assesses future skills needs in advanced manufacturing, develops courses to meet these needs, and makes those courses widely available through high-quality providers such as Institutes of Technology. It will support Small and Medium Enterprises to work with emerging technologies in the manufacturing sector, such as electrification, additive manufacturing, and metrology. We will then explore whether this Skills Value Chain approach can be used in other emerging skills areas and to support government priorities such as net zero.