DfE responds to City & Guilds recent Apprenticeship Levy Survey

City & Guilds recently polled 500 senior decision makers from a range of organisations to ask them about their skills and recruitment needs and gauge their opinions about the impending changes to the apprenticeship system and likely impact upon their organisations. Their survey highlights can be found here.

After reviewing City & Guilds’ concerns regarding the results of this survey a Department for Education spokesperson said:

“The apprenticeship levy will boost our economic productivity, increase the country’s skills base and give millions a step on the ladder of opportunity. Thanks to the levy, £2.5 billion will be invested in apprenticeships by 2019-20, double the amount spent in 2010-11.

“Employers are at the heart of our apprenticeship reforms and have been working with us since 2013 to create the apprenticeship standards and ensure they are high quality and deliver the skills that they need. We have also published a detailed levy guide for employers and an online calculator that enables them to understand how much levy they will pay and how they could use their digital funds to pay for training in future.”

Further information:

• Quality is at the heart of all of our apprenticeship reforms. We have introduced new apprenticeship standards which are developed by employers themselves and rigorously checked and taken steps to protect the term apprenticeship from misuse helping us to achieve our target of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020 and providing excellent value for money.

• Employers are designing new high quality apprenticeships that address the specific skills requirements of their sectors, with over 450 standards either developed or in development since the Trailblazer process began in October 2013 by over 170 different Trailblazers.

• From next April the new Institute for Apprenticeships with employer expertise at its heart, will be charged with approving standards to ensure they are high quality.

• The government will support all employers in using the levy funds to invest in apprenticeships and the Department for Education and SFA are working with employers to create apprenticeships across all sectors