Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the value for money of apprenticeships standards compared with apprenticeships frameworks.

New apprenticeship standards across all levels are being designed by employers, creating higher quality training that will lead to a more skilled and productive economy. The move away from apprenticeship frameworks’ on-programme assessment via qualifications to the standards’ rigorous end-point assessment gives employers much greater assurance that, at the end of the apprenticeship, the apprentice is fully occupationally competent.

There were 163,700 starts on apprenticeship standards in 2017/18, which is more than 6 times higher than in 2016/17. This shows that employers are moving quickly to this new higher quality offer. The 20% minimum off-the-job training rule and this shift to standards with a longer average duration has already contributed to a 25% rise in expected apprenticeship training hours over the past year.

We will continue to assess the value for money of apprenticeship standards over the longer term as we see more apprentices complete the standards and progress in their careers.