Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of further education colleges losing their allocation of non-levied apprenticeship funding on (1) local employers, and (2) existing, and (3) potential, local apprentices.

189 colleges of further education (FE) held contracts with the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) to deliver apprenticeships prior to this procurement. The ESFA received bids from 182 of these FE colleges in the procurement, of which 10 have not been offered awards. Six of these were because the bids did not meet the minimum scoring threshold, and the remaining four were due to the awards falling below the £200,000 minimum contract value, set to ensure viable contracts for providers, employers and the ESFA. The 10 colleges are dispersed around England as shown in the table below.

All FE colleges with apprentices already in training will continue to receive funding until they have completed their learning. In addition, subject to limits on the number of starts, we have offered all existing providers that were unsuccessful in the procurement a three-month extension of their current contracts to the end of March 2018, allowing them to take on new starts. All providers who are on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers are still able to deliver to levy paying employers.

Potential providers were required to indicate the sectors and regions in which they would be delivering apprenticeships in their tenders. We are confident that non-levy paying employers can access high quality apprenticeship training to support their growth and success, regardless of where in the country they operate in.

We will continue to keep this under review and take action where necessary.