The stop-starts pressures on college apprenticeships

As education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi stood before a sea of college leaders at the Association of Colleges annual conference in November 2021, he issued a “call to arms”: Colleges needed to increase their share of the apprenticeship market. 

Back then, around 30 per cent of apprenticeships were delivered by colleges. 

“If we really want to transform supply we will have to grow that number,” Zahawi told them. “I know colleges are more than capable of it.”