Apprenticeship starts marginally grew in the first quarter of this academic year – but there were nearly 1,000 fewer young people aged under 19 on employer books, new data shows.
There were 132,560 new apprentices in August, September and October of 2024, up 1.3 per cent on the same period last year.
Higher-level apprenticeships have held up the growth while lower-level apprenticeships have fallen, following previous trends.
While the overall headline figures suggest employers haven’t drastically slowed down their apprenticeship recruitment, the data is for the period preceding the autumn budget, which contained wage and tax rises on employers that come into effect this April.
Some employers have warned the incoming measures will wreck their apprenticeship recruitment plans. Future stats releases will reveal the extent of this predicted impact.
Here are the headlines from today’s figures:
More ups but more downs
This is the first full quarter of apprenticeship statistics since July’s general election, and since prime minister Keir Starmer announced level 7 apprenticeships would face the axe in order to “rebalance” the system towards young people.
2024 saw the highest first-quarter apprenticeship starts in four years overall, but the lowest number of level 2 starts, which have fallen consecutively. Level 3 starts also fell slightly.
Higher level apprenticeships, those at levels 4 to 7, rose by 8 per cent compared to the previous year, whereas level 2 apprenticeships fell by 5 per cent.
Under 19s were the only age group to see a decline in apprenticeship starts in quarter one compared to the previous year.
There were 41,810 under 19s that started an apprenticeship in August, September and October in 2024, down from 42,740 over that period in 2023. While 2 per cent down on the same period in 2023, under 19 starts were not quite as low as they were in 2021 or 2022.
As a share of the overall number of starts in the first quarter, under-19s made up 31.5 per cent in 2024/25, down from 32.7 per cent in 2023/24.
Alongside scrapping level 7 apprenticeships to free up some funding, Labour has announced plans to introduce so-called foundation apprenticeships in an effort to reverse this trend of falling numbers of young people. However, Labour is yet to reveal what these new forms of apprenticeships will look like.
Level 7
Labour is establishing Skills England, a new agency within the Department for Education, to replace the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.
Ministers are yet to announce who will run Skills England, but they will be responsible for determining much of Labour’s apprenticeship policy, such as scrapping level 7 apprenticeships and funding from the growth and skills levy.
Nearly 11,000 people started a level 7 apprenticeship in quarter one of this academic year, broadly similar to the same period last year.
Around two in five of those were apprentice accountants (4262), followed by senior leader apprentices (2554) and then solicitors (1031).
Redundancies
November 2024 saw the lowest number of monthly apprentice redundancies in nearly five years.
Employers have been able to record redundancies since July 2020. Monthly figures show they peaked in August 2020, the first month of data, with 890. The average since then is 340.
Between August and November this academic year, 870 apprentices have been recorded as being made redundant, down from 1,350 over the same period in 2023/24. Of those, one-third were under 19.
This year, September saw the highest number with 330, but just 100 were recorded for November.
Provider analysis
Analysis of the largest apprenticeship training providers shows that while Lifetime Training recorded the highest number of starts this quarter, their numbers are around 20 per cent down on the previous year.
BPP Professional saw their starts grow by 40 per cent compared to the same period last year. Multiverse, Corndel and Paragon and the British Army also recorded growth in quarter one starts.
Proportions of starts by provider type didn’t change very much. Independent training providers recorded 57 per cent of starts, down slightly from 58.2 per cent the year before. FE colleges started 24.5 per cent of starts, the same as last year.
The slight fall in ITPs’ share was made up by providers in the ‘other public’ category which includes universities and local authorities.
Sadly this shows that apprenticeships are still not being promoted well enough when young people are taking their GCSEs as schools try and maintain the size of their sixth forms. So much for inspectors in schools reporting as strongly as they do with ITPs on impartial advice and guidance.