Is Rishi going to review the Apprenticeship Levy? FE Soundbite Weekly Journal #637

Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition #637

We had the Spring Budget this week and a lot of comments in our sector reaction piece… particularly around what Rishi Sunak mentioned with regards his review of the Apprenticeship Levy. DfE  have explained to me that Rishi isn’t going to complete a formal review of Apprenticeships, but, it is more about continuing to engage with business and making sure apprenticeships continue to meet the needs of employers.

Now we will be having a whole series of articles on this over the coming weeks and months.

Interesting that Rishi is reviewing the Apprenticeship Levy / chatting with employers and not Nadhim! Maybe he’ll hand it over… but I think we need to think, what does Rishi need, what do employers need and is this a massive, massive opportunity to fix a load of problems with Apprenticeships that we have had for a long time now.

How can we improve the system for employers?.. the Levy is for large employers, how do we make the system easier for all employers? How do we encourage more entry level Apprenticeships, but still keep progression routes? How do we still support SME’s as they are a natural home for Apprenticeships? My fear is that the word Apprenticeships will be removed and left with maybe a Skills Levy… Apprenticeships need support.. and support for all employers. So it is good he is looking at it.

I think as a sector we need to be solution focused with ideas on this… not stakeholders shouting over each other… this is the opportunity for everyone to work together!

This week we also wrapped up the Levelling up report with Campaign for Learning and many different cool perspectives. We also concluded season 2 of the livestreams with the season finale with the Black FE Leadership Group.

We also had a great article from Rob Halfon on social mobility and graduates.

I hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week!

Gavin, CEO and Founder, FE News and FE Careers