Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of those undertaking apprenticeships are from isolated communities, as defined in the Integrated Communities Strategy green paper, published on 14 March.

A definition for ‘isolated communities’ is not available in the Communities Strategy green paper, and as such a percentage of apprenticeship starts for this cohort cannot be provided. However, The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has set an action which builds on the proposal set out in March’s green paper to “use targeted local communications and community ambassadors, including employers, to ensure minority ethnic groups are applying, getting and completing apprenticeships, and that local employers are recruiting apprentices.” The government will respond to the consultation on the Integrated Communities Strategy green paper later this year.

The department does publish apprenticeship data on under-represented groups, and we have provided apprenticeship starts by a breakdown of detailed ethnicity to provide an alternative categorisation of cohorts which may fall under the ‘isolated communities’ definition. The table below provides apprenticeship starts broken down by detailed ethnicity from August 2017 to April 2018 as first reported for the 2017/18 academic year:

1) Volumes are rounded to the nearest ten, whilst ‘*’ indicates a percentage of less that 0.5.

2) The data source is the Individualised Learner Record (ILR).

These figures are published and are available in the further education data library: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fe-data-library.