Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress his Department has made on increasing the number and quality of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year olds.

We are on track to deliver 2 million apprenticeships over this Parliament.

We continue to focus on quality, insisting that all apprenticeships are jobs, have a minimum duration of a year, include on the job training and meet the needs of employers. As a result the number of 'full' 16-18 apprenticeship starts – those with a planned duration of a year – have doubled.

Apprenticeship reforms will further increase quality and simplify the system, making it easier and more desirable for employers to offer more apprenticeships in the future.