Further Education and Skilled Workers: Coronavirus

(asked on 9th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on the ability of (a) people to access appropriate further education skills training and (b) of employers to recruit skilled workers to support recovery after the covid-19 outbreak..


Answered by
Gillian Keegan Portrait
Gillian Keegan
Secretary of State for Education
This question was answered on 15th June 2020

Training is vital in order to provide the highly skilled workforce that employers need to support the recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak.

We have supported further education providers and introduced a range of flexibilities, including encouraging online delivery, so that as many learners as possible can successfully complete their courses. We have also ensured that furloughed workers are able to start apprenticeships.

We have frequently engaged with further education providers to monitor the level of training that they are able to deliver and we have been actively working with them to address issues. From 15 June, providers should begin to offer some face to face contact to 16 to 19 learners in the first year of a 2-year study programme. We want to have all learners back into education settings, as soon as the scientific advice allows, because it is the best place for them to learn and because we know how important it is for their mental wellbeing to have social interactions with their peers and teachers.

We will also continue to work with providers and employers to ensure that they deliver the skills that our workers and economy need. This includes looking at ensuring that we support employers, especially small businesses, to take on new apprentices this year. In addition, we have launched a new online Skills Toolkit to provide free high quality digital and numeracy courses, the skills most sought after by employers. We have also already announced that we are providing an extra £3 billion over the course of this Parliament for a new National Skills Fund to help people learn new skills.

Our latest guidance on COVID-19 for the post-16 sector and all other educational settings is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-schools-and-other-educational-settings. Guidance for education and training that is due to begin in September 2020 will be published in due course.

These are rapidly developing circumstances; we continue to keep the situation under review and will keep Parliament updated accordingly.

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