Forty thousand new apprenticeship places are to be targeted on young people not in employment, education or training, and a further 10,000 new Higher Level Apprenticeships in SMEs. Importantly, the government claims this will make it the ‘highest ever public investment in apprenticeships’, so that by 2014-15 there will be funding for 75,000 more adults to start an apprenticeship than under Labour’s plans.
However, in the government’s Skills for Growth Strategy Document from November 2010, they stated there would be an expansion of ‘the numbers of adult apprenticeships available, so by 2014-15 there will be 75,000 more adults starting than under the previous government’s plans’. The government says spending on adult apprenticeships will be boosted by up to £250 million a year by the end of the spending review period, ‘funding for adult apprenticeships will be increased by £250 million a year by 2014-15 relative to the level inherited from the previous government’.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills reaffirmed this: ‘To ensure that businesses have the highly skilled workforce needed to drive growth the government will boost spending on adult apprenticeships by up to £250 million by 2014-15, providing up to an additional 75,000 apprenticeship places by the end of the spending review period.’
Therefore it is clear the government’s announcement on apprenticeships today is a re-announcement of their commitment in the spending review (there was nothing on apprenticeships in budget 2010). Significantly though, the government stated in the spending review that up to £250 million extra annually could be spent on apprenticeships. In today’s announcement, funding for these so called ‘new’ apprenticeships will only be £180 million, over a four year period. This means the government are looking to spend less than what they were before, so hardly a cause for celebration.
Im confused by your comments in this article. You quote in several places that the gov. dept of business, innovation and skills, and skills for growth stategy says UP TO 250m a year. So, in effect if they are promising UP TO 250m annually, then spending 180m over 4 years still falls within those previously stated parameters. In may not be great but its also not a broken a promise or creative which appears to be the purpose of the article. Lets not forget it was labour that was in power from 1997 to 2010 and got us into the terrible mess in the first place!
of course they think only THEY can count when infact ,they DON’T count ! as many real working people will be pointing out on Saturday !
a terrible mess ? oh yes ,Capitalism ! given free rein to abuse all good society.
My point was that the government implied in their previous statements that it would take up to £250m annually extra to fund an additional 75,000 places. That’s a big difference to £180 million over the next four years, so I think it’s important we note that, and question why all of sudden it can be done a lot cheaper. I should also add, if you take a look at the budget documents, the amount spent on these extra apprenticeships in the year 2014/15 is only £5m, compared to £100m in 2011/12. This means these so called ‘new’ apprenticehips are one off, i.e. 75,000 extra over the parliament, not 75,000 extra annually.
Rayhan there is indeed confusion over their Apps figures but I do think these 50k are new. The 75k that came from the CSR and Skills Strategy were Adult Apprenticeships which are cheaper than young peoples and would obviously be doing nothing to address growing youth unemployment. These new ones are for young people and are the first expansion of young peoples apprenticeships they’ve announced. While of course 50,000 Apps places(remember these are only places – they may not be taken up for whatever reason) should be welcomed, it still doesn’t match the 100,000 or so jobs created via FJF or the impact of EMA being scrapped. That should be the real point of comparison between figures.