Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many Trailblazer groups developing new apprenticeship standards have been advised that their draft Trailblazer Standard should not include a qualification because it does not meet her Department's rules.

All approved apprenticeship standards, including those that do not contain mandated qualifications, can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/apprenticeship-standards.

Qualifications can only be specified in the standard if they are either a legal requirement, needed for professional registration or where an apprentice would be at a significant disadvantage as they try to progress in their career without them. The rationale for restricting the inclusion of qualifications is that the end-point assessment will provide definitive evidence of whether the apprentice has acquired full occupational competence thus negating the need for on-programme qualifications. Not mandating qualifications in standards unless absolutely necessary also ensures that individual employers have the freedom to choose the most appropriate training to enable their apprentices to achieve full competence.

This means that Trailblazers that would like qualifications in their standards but can’t meet one of the criteria are advised not to include them, and Trailblazers that submit standards including qualifications without providing the evidence that their inclusion meets one of the criteria are either rejected or approved subject to the removal of the qualifications.

However, with over 215 Trailblazers having developed or developing nearly 500 standards, we do not hold information about the number of times this kind of advice has been provided.