Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of apprenticeship levy-paying employers in England that have used that funding to pay for MBA courses.

Apprenticeship funding can only be used to pay for apprenticeships and not courses, such as a Master of Business Administration. Whilst apprenticeships may replicate some training delivered by traditional courses, an apprenticeship has to meet certain requirements to make sure it combines on and off-the-job training and delivers occupational competence.

The Senior Leader apprenticeship standard, which is at masters’ level, has only been available since 27 February 2018. The department holds the overall number of starts on each apprenticeship standard but does not currently have published data on the number of Senior Leader starts.

We do not hold data on which apprenticeship standards levy-paying employers spend their apprenticeship funding on.