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Social Mobility and the Professions

We support apprenticeships, but part of the problem is the new broader definition of apprenticeships, which includes level 2 as well as level 3 and is part of the UCAS problem. So far as I know, no other advanced western country calls level 2 "apprenticeships"; by and large that description is reserved for level 3, as it used to be here. Using some of the Train to Gain budget, we have proposed skills scholarships aimed specifically at funding apprentices to go to university. We made the initial suggestion because the figures are so low. If the Minister were to give us reliable figures, we would appreciate it, because they are hard to pin down. We suggested funding 2,000 apprentices to go to university and take courses that would enable them to develop the skills that they had already displayed in their apprenticeship, and we thought that it would be a very good use of a modest part of the Train to Gain budget.