Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of school career services in (a) highlighting and (b) encouraging apprenticeships.

The department has introduced a ladder of support and intervention, as set out in our careers statutory guidance, to support compliance with the provider access legislation which requires schools to offer pupils encounters with providers of technical education and apprenticeships. We will continue to monitor compliance, the support in place and the impact on young people.

We will also continue to monitor progress against the Gatsby Benchmarks, especially benchmarks 5, 6 and 7 which are relevant for highlighting and encouraging apprenticeships take-up.

Alongside this, the Careers and Enterprise Company’s (CEC) future skills questionnaire shows a move from 38% understanding of apprenticeships in year 7 to 88% by year 13.

There are multiple resources available to schools and young people to highlight and encourage apprenticeships participation:

• CEC’s network of Careers Hubs (covering 95% of schools and colleges) works with schools and colleges to support their careers education programmes.
• The Skills for Careers Apprenticeships support page, which can be found here: https://www.skillsforcareers.education.gov.uk/pages/training-choice/apprenticeships.
• CEC’s resource directory, found here: https://resources.careersandenterprise.co.uk/.
• ‘Amazing Apprenticeships’ resources and support for schools and colleges.
• The ‘Find an apprenticeship’ government website which currently hosts over 40,000 live vacancies and is available here: https://www.findapprenticeship.service.gov.uk/apprenticeshipsearch.