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Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 839: 28th March 2026. Apprenticeship Achievements Are Up, But Who Is the Skills System Serving?
This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal by FE News: ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here's a snapshot of the latest announcements and epic thought leadership articles from sector influencers and thought leaders across FE and Skills this week on FE News.
Gavin’s Reflective Perspective
More apprentices are completing their programmes than at any point in the last seven years!
We had the Qualification Achievement Rates (QAR) for Apprenticeship data released this week. QAR Reaches 65.4% with 25+ Starts Growing by 25.4%. More apprentices are completing their programmes than at any point in the last seven years. The national achievement rate rose to 65.4% in 2024/25, up 4.9% from 60.5% the year before, with 198,330 learners achieving, the highest volume since 2017/18.
Hurray!
Has Apprenticeship Policy and Defunding Skewed the stats short term?
However… provisional figures for the first half of 2025/26 raise questions about who the system is serving. Overall starts rose 11.9% to 226,620, but that growth has come overwhelmingly from older learners. Starts for those aged 25 and over surged 25.4% to 111,370 and now account for nearly half of all apprenticeship starts. Under-19 starts actually fell 5.2% to 53,510, while 19-24 growth was a more modest 7.9%.
Level 7 starts rose 51.9% ahead of January 2026 funding restrictions (which no doubt also increased the number of older learners). Interestingly… there have been just 110 (yes, 110) Foundation Apprenticeship starts so far!
So, with the growth in older learners, was this a grab for the Level 7’s, and is this the reason why, with the 16 Apprenticeship Standards being defunded that were announced last week… that DWP are now restricting this to stop another apprenticeship grab?
The Data Backs the Rationale Behind The Youth Jobs Grant
So with all of this data to hand, no wonder we had the announcements last week on the Youth Jobs Grant, (which offers businesses £3,000 for every young person aged 18-24 they hire who has been on Universal Credit for 6 months and is looking for work)… and additional support to SMEs to recruit more young people as well.
Mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers
The QAR data also showed learners from ethnic minority backgrounds rising 25.4% to 41,960, now 18.9% of the cohort, up from 16.8% last year. Again, great progress, so much work has gone on for over a decade with the Multi-Cultural Apprenticeship Awards, the Black Leadership Group, and I suspect this is the fruit of many people's labour, but it still appears we have a mountain to climb to increase the diversity in Apprenticeships and work-based learning.
Which makes the timing of this week's other major announcement all the more relevant, as interestingly, the Government announced Firms with 250 or more employees will be required to publish 6 key pay‑gap metrics and new workforce composition data. The government’s response to the consultation on mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting, shows widespread support for introducing this legislation. 87% of respondents agreed large employers should report their ethnicity and disability pay gaps to increase transparency and help tackle barriers in the workplace.
Adding in this layer for large employers, is great… but must be an additional admin hurdle, sensibly, this hasn’t been added in (yet), for SMEs, who don’t have dedicated HR team. We treasure what we measure and all that…
Disabled People Are Twice as Likely to Be unemployed compared to non disabled people
For me, this is great news. After the Feb 2026 ONS Labour Market data was released, The Work Foundation, at Lancaster University highlighted that Disabled people are twice as likely to be unemployed than non-disabled people (9.2% vs 4.4%). There are now 547,000 unemployed disabled people, an increase of 110,000 since Oct-Dec 2024. Unemployment has risen across the UK economy in the last 12 months, but analysis indicates that the rate has risen far more quickly for disabled people than non-disabled people.
So the fact that there are now reporting measures in place to track pay (eg of people in employment), we don’t just want people as a digit and a tick box they are in roles, if there is a pay gap, we need sustainable jobs and pay as well.
There are the WorkWell programmes with £250 million, which is earmarked to support up to 250,000 people to return or stay in work. You can understand the joining up… but how can we introduce even more support for large employers, or even SMEs, to support people with disabilities into long-term and well-paid work?
Skills England is being very data-led; first, we need to create and then track the data, so this feels like progress… what we then do with that data and the support implemented is then key.
Overall… more Apprenticeship completions, mechanisms to support young people into Apprenticeships are coming on stream, and tracking is underway to look at sustainable jobs. After a lot of doom-and-gloom sentiment after defunding announcements last week, being positive, these announcements from this week, feel like progress to me.
This week's exclusive features carry serious weight too. Petra Wilton from CMI makes the case that defunding management apprenticeships is self-sabotage when it comes to productivity, a theme that connects directly to everything we have been discussing above (and the main theme of Soundbite last week). Rob Nitsch from FAB tackles Level 3 and below qualification reform, and crucially asks whether we can build a system that not only works for all but actually sticks. That longevity question is one the sector has been burned on before. Then Alun Francis, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, examines whether the Youth Guarantee will be enough. That is a pretty epic line-up of exclusive thought leadership in one week.
So, I hope you enjoy Soundbite this week.. so to you who are on Easter break already.. I am very jealous, for us that are sticking around next week, I salute you! Hot Cross buns await next Friday!
Epic Exclusives Thought Leadership Articles
Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week
Level 3 and Below Reforms: Turning Ambition Into A System That Works For All, and Sticks By Rob Nitsch, Chief Executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies
The Self-Sabotage of Skills: Why Defunding Management Apprenticeships will hit productivity By Petra Wilton, Director of Policy and External Affairs, Chartered Management Institute (CMI)
The Youth Guarantee: A Welcome Step, But Will It Be Enough? By Alun Francis OBE, the Chair of the Social Mobility Commission and Principal and Chief Executive of Blackpool and The Fylde College
This week, we also had some other Epic Exclusives!
Why Participation and Development Now Demands Demonstrable Impact By David Jaffa, Founder of the National Talent Academy
How the Schools White Paper could shape the future of SEND support By Vicki Stokes, Head of the School of Education at the University of Sunderland
There is Big Business Value in Recruiting 16-Year-Old AI-Natives By Mo Isap OBE, CEO of the IN4 Group
Skills for Life: Why Apprenticeships Matter More Than Ever By Karen Handley, Head of Future Careers at Virgin Media
Is Gamification the Key to Student Engagement? By Dr Lucy Atkinson, Director of the Centre for Academic Persistence at Arden University
What’s New in the World of FE?
Defunded, Not Derailed: Mixed Study Programmes for 2026 | Episode Three
Announcements
QAR Reaches 65.4% with 25+ Starts Growing by 25.4%
OfS Publishes New Research on How Prepared Students Feel for Life After University or College By Office for Students (OfS)
New Apprenticeship Unit to Supercharge Battery Manufacturing By Skills England
Government commits to introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for large employers By Office for Equality and Opportunity
CITB and ECITB Merger Consultation Launches as Government Moves to Simplify Skills System By Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
In The Know
We have two Collective Intelligence events planned for 2026... aka Collectives
We have big plans for upcoming Collectives, and you can get involved. One is on SEND in April... and another on NEETs in June. We have learnt a lot from the Green Mindset Collective and we are drawing from this on how to give people more voice, more influence on the report... and to make the report more action focused (the Green Mindset Collective had a playbook for people to use, not just a dusty report that is never accessed, but something usable as a takeaway for the entire sector).
On 24th April 2026, at Tavistock Square in London, join us for the Bridging the SEND Transition Collective in partnership with ETF
Join us for the Breaking Barriers Collective event in partnership with Edge Foundation, working together collectively to solve the NEET puzzle.
These aren't conferences; these are collectives. These aren't lectures or chalk and talk, but interactive: it's rolling up your sleeves and making real change, where you get involved and actually give real input. These are two massively important Collectives, so join us and help shape the report and sector response!
By Danny O’Meara, Operations Manager, FE News and | 