Nursery World - Apprentice anguish

With the number of young people starting apprenticeships down by 40 per cent, it's a challenging time for employers, says Mark Dawe

None of the latest official apprenticeship statistics make for happy reading. Starts on the programme in England were just 27,000 last November, a staggering 40 per cent decrease on 12 months before.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) estimates that nearly 180,000 starts per quarter are now needed to hit the Government’s three million manifesto target, compared with the 110,000 that began in the last quarter.

Skills minister Anne Milton has defied the wishes of her civil servants by bravely stating that the numbers should be back on track by September 2018, and we hope she is right. But leaving aside that headline target, the real concerns should be the falling number of new apprenticeship opportunities for 16- to 24-year-olds and at intermediate and advanced levels (Levels 2 and 3). Since the levy reforms were introduced last May, the number of apprenticeship starts at Level 2 has halved, while starts for 16- to 18-year-olds have fallen by 38 per cent – and AELP is very aware that childcare is one of the sectors most adversely affected.

Big challenges

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