Calls to ban graduates from publicly funded apprenticeships have resurfaced after new data revealed over £400 million in levy funds was spent on people who already held a bachelor’s degree or higher last year.
Freedom of Information request figures show that one in six apprentices (56,000) were university alumni in 2023/24, including 14,000 people with a master’s degree.
Almost a third of these starts were on level 7 apprenticeships – courses which ministers are now planning to axe from public subsidy.
Tom Richmond, a former adviser to education ministers who obtained the data, estimates that £431 million, almost of fifth of the Department for Education’s total apprenticeship budget, was used to fund apprenticeships for graduates last year. Around £182 million of this was for level 7 apprenticeships.
In a report for the Social Market Foundation, Richmond said spending this amount on graduates is “not tolerable” if the government “wishes to ‘break down barriers to opportunity’” considering starts at lower levels have collapsed since the levy came in, and there are almost one million young people not in education, employment or training.
He believes the figures support his recommendation, first made in 2023, that the government bar graduates from all publicly funded apprenticeships.
His report states that this restriction should be imposed instead of a blanket levy ban on all level 7 apprenticeships.
Richmond said the apprenticeship money spent on graduates “should be redirected towards new apprenticeships for young people leaving school or college, particularly those from the most deprived backgrounds, who should be prioritised for the finite funding available for apprenticeships”.
He added: “University graduates have already had huge sums of taxpayers’ money invested in their education, so it is only right that young people who do not attend university are given the same level of investment and support to kickstart their careers.”
But Simon Ashworth, deputy CEO and director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, warned that limiting these individuals from accessing apprenticeships would be a “huge backward step” for the programme, considering “around half of the working population already hold a degree”.
He said that the workplace skills that people need will “change as the economy develops – technological advances and AI will only speed up that process”, and added: “As labour market needs evolve, it’s vital to keep the apprenticeship system open to people throughout their careers, whether that’s for upskilling or reskilling.”
While most apprentices who are graduates are on higher level courses, more than 14,000 were also taking level 2 and 3 apprenticeships. This could indicate that graduate apprentices may have retrained in a new sector, like in adult care, where their employer trains new hires through apprenticeships.
Richmond also used his new Social Market Foundation report to call for management apprenticeships to be removed from the levy and funded instead as non-apprenticeship training within the upcoming growth and skills levy.
The level 7 apprenticeship with the second-largest number of starts in 2023-24 was the senior leader standard (7,140) – which controversially started life with an MBA included before it was stripped out by the government in 2020.
The SMF report reiterated past concerns that other management and leadership courses have been “rebadged as apprenticeships.”
It includes an example that the level 3 ‘team leader or supervisor’ apprenticeship is eligible for £5,000 of levy funding and attracted 13,760 learners in 2023/24, making it the second most popular apprenticeship in England.
However, if a person were to study the comparable CMI level 3 diploma in ‘principles of management and leadership’, it only costs £1,400 for a part-time, 12-month course combining in-person and online learning.
Richmond said that management courses for existing staff have become so prevalent that they used up an estimated £150 million of apprenticeship funding last year.
His report urged the government to reclassify management apprenticeships at all levels as non-apprenticeship provision within the growth and skills levy – which is currently being designed by Skills England – and set funding for this training at market prices.
A DfE spokesperson said: “Ensuring people have the skills they need for the future is crucial to this government’s number one mission to grow the economy.
“We’re restricting funding for level 7 apprenticeships to ensure apprenticeships support those who need them most, while also meeting the needs of individuals, employers, and the economy.
“Further details will follow, informed by Skills England’s recommendations on priority skills needs.”
