Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department has taken to support small businesses in taking on apprentices.

Apprenticeships offer businesses of all sizes an opportunity to make a sustainable investment in the training they need to grow and prosper.

For businesses with fewer than 50 employees who take on apprentices aged 16-18 (or up to the age of 24 for care leavers), the government meets the full cost of training. All organisations who do not pay the apprenticeship levy benefit from very generous funding from government, which will rise to 95% of the cost of training and assessment in 2019.

The new apprenticeships marketing campaign, Fire it Up, aims to increase the number of apprenticeship vacancies offered by employers, and incorporates a website featuring case studies from small businesses and information on the funding support available. It will continue to support employers to create new vacancies and publicise these on the ‘Find an Apprenticeship’ website.

Small businesses are also able to benefit from transfers of apprenticeship levy funds, which enable levy-paying employers to use up to 10% of their annual levy funds (up to 25% from April 2019) to support apprenticeship starts in their supply chain or to meet local skills shortages.