An assessment of the potential merits of extending consumer protection law to cover further education (FE) courses has not been made. However, the government promotes high quality FE within a regulatory framework, that aims to protect the rights of learners accessing FE courses.

FE college corporations operate as independent charities and are subject to robust accountability arrangements for the public funding they receive. Ofsted inspects and publicly reports on the quality of education within FE providers. The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) allocates significant annual funding to providers of education and skills training for young people and adults. ESFA holds providers to account for their performance to ensure they consistently raise standards.

The FE Choices learner satisfaction survey 2017-18 captures learners’ experiences of their college or training organisation. The most recent survey was published by the department on 19 July and reports that 82% of learners were ‘likely’ or ‘extremely likely’ to recommend their learning provider to friends or family.

FE providers must also ensure that complaint handling processes and practices are accessible, clear and fair to learners.

In October 2018, the government announced a £100 million initial commitment to continue to test, learn and develop the National Retraining Scheme. This has allowed us to start delivering the first parts of the scheme in the Liverpool City Region. Get Help to Retrain will be expanded to more people and more areas throughout the testing phase before being made available to all eligible adults in England in 2020. In addition to this, we are continuing to develop new products in parallel to the testing of Get Help to Retrain, which will collectively make up the complete service.

Get Help to Retrain is the first of a series of products that will make up the full National Retraining Scheme (NRS). We are expecting the NRS to evolve and grow as we learn better what best works.

With support from qualified National Careers Service advisers, the service will support adults to understand which skills they have from their current role and which further skills would be required for a potential new, better job.

In addition, the service helps people to find training opportunities that may help the user to bridge the skills gap to a new role, initially consisting of training currently available and later including more bespoke offerings. It will also direct users to local job opportunities that could be within their reach.

I can confirm that we have received the letter from my hon. Friend, the Member for Witney, Robert Courts, and 203 College Principals and I am responding to this letter. My hon. Friend, the Member for Witney, Robert Courts, and 203 College Principals shall receive their response shortly.

Our quarterly ‘Apprenticeships and Traineeships’ and monthly ‘Apprenticeships and Levy Statistics’ data releases provide extensive information on the breakdown of apprenticeship starts by level, sector subject area and framework/standard. This is in addition to whether starts are supported by the apprenticeship levy. The most recent quarterly release was published on 11 July 2019 and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeships-and-traineeships-july-2019. This data, in addition to our extensive engagement with employers and sector bodies, informs our picture of emerging demand across the employer-led apprenticeships programme.

We use the ‘Further education: indices of multiple deprivation’ data release to understand the background of apprentices and inform our widening participation policies. This data is broken down by apprenticeship level and benchmarked against data for participation in all further education and skills training. We know that apprentices disproportionately come from more disadvantaged areas: in 2017/18, 24% of participating apprentices came from the most disadvantaged fifth of areas, compared to 15.6% from the least disadvantaged fifth. This data is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/765589/Index_of_Multiple_Deprivation_201516_to_201718.xlsx.

The apprenticeship levy is collected by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) from employers with a pay bill in excess of £3 million per year. HMRC does not collect data which allows levy collection to be broken down by sector.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) does not require levy-paying employers to register a sector when they set up an online apprenticeship service account to manage their funds. Therefore, ESFA are unable to supply information on the sectoral distribution of spending on apprenticeships. There are currently no plans to change the registration process to collect this information from employers registering for an apprenticeship service account.

We are working closely with employers in the creative industries, including companies in the screen industry, so they can realise the benefits of apprenticeships. The Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport is developing an innovative pilot which will enable apprentices to benefit from hands-on experience on the sets of major films and television shows. Launching later this year, it will explore a new model that fulfils the requirements of high-quality apprenticeships, but uses multiple placements on film and television productions, as well as addressing skills shortages.

There are currently no plans to reintroduce the Young Apprenticeships programme.

However, high-quality apprenticeships are available to people of all ages. Our reforms are improving apprenticeships by making them longer with more off-the job training and formal assessment at the end.

An apprenticeship provides the foundation for a successful career and is a great option for young people who are strong academically but want on-the-job experience and a high-quality alternative to full-time university study.

Traineeships are available to provide quality training to those young people who need to develop their skills and experience in order to enter the labour market. The department’s recent Traineeship Impact Evaluation Report shows that 75% of trainees are in apprenticeships, other jobs, or further learning a year after their traineeship.

The department publishes the funding allocations for individual colleges annually.

Links to funding allocations for the most recent years for both 16 to 19 year olds and adults are given below:

Funding allocations for 16 to 19 year olds can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/16-to-19-allocation-data-2018-to-2019-academic-year.

Funding allocations for adults can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/funding-allocations-to-training-providers-2018-to-2019.

The latest estimates of the proportion of adults without qualifications come from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey data for the period January 2018 to December 2018. In Hounslow, 6.0% of adults aged between 16 and 64 had no qualifications, compared with 6.6% for London as a whole.

The information requested is not held centrally.

In the department, a voluntary ‘flexi-scheme’ is available to all employees who are responsible for ensuring their hours of attendance are recorded accurately. Managers are responsible for ensuring that employees are not working excessive hours. If an employee accrues extra hours they may, with the agreement of their manager, take time off. Managers and employees have an obligation to ensure that working patterns are in accordance with the working time regulations.

The department is committed to the wellbeing of its staff and around 90% of our senior civil servants have received Wellbeing Confident Leader training. The department has mental health first aiders, fair treatment ambassadors and a wellbeing network who all work to help prioritise staff wellbeing at work.

The number of pupils attending independent schools in England in each year since 2010 is published in table 1a of the ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ statistical release. This can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2019.

Information on the nationality of pupils is not collected and information on children attending schools in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

We are pleased that Universities UK has recognised degree apprenticeships as a ‘growing success story’. Degree apprenticeships give employers the opportunity to work with universities to develop the higher-level skills they need, and apprentices the opportunity to gain a degree while they earn. Alongside our work to raise awareness of these benefits, we are also making it easier to find and apply for vacancies with employers of all sizes.

Current vacancies can be found on the ‘Find an apprenticeship’ website, the UCAS ‘Careers finder’ site, and employers’ own websites. We encourage employers to promote their future vacancies up to a year in advance in our Higher and Degree Listing, which is published at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-and-degree-apprenticeships. We are aiming to publish our next listing, for vacancies commencing in September 2020, in September 2019 and this will be distributed to schools and handed out at events.

The Degree Apprenticeships Development Fund has supported initiatives including UCAS careers fairs, materials on apprenticeships for schools, and apprenticeship ambassadors. In the 2018/19 academic year, we attended 30 UCAS Higher Education Exhibitions across England, directly engaging with an estimated 8,500 young people, and worked with UCAS to contact over a quarter of a million more young people by email to raise awareness of apprenticeships

We also provide a free service to schools through the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge project, to make sure that teachers have the knowledge and support to enable them to promote apprenticeships to their students. This has enabled over three quarters of a million young people to hear about apprenticeships since the project’s launch in 2016.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The department does publish a wide range of data on apprenticeships on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis, including on the number of starts in each sector subject area. These resources are available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-apprenticeships.

The most recent statistics on apprenticeships starts by industry sector cover the academic years 2012/13 to 2016/17 and are published on GOV.UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeships-in-england-by-industry-characteristics.

In 2016/17 there were:

• 36,170 starts in the manufacturing sector;
• 1,620 starts in the energy sector; and
• 31,610 starts in the construction sector.

Statistics for 2017/18 are due to be published in October 2019.

The most recent statistics on apprenticeships starts by industry sector cover the academic years 2012/13 to 2016/17 and are published on GOV.UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeships-in-england-by-industry-characteristics.

In 2016/17 there were:

• 36,170 starts in the manufacturing sector;
• 1,620 starts in the energy sector; and
• 31,610 starts in the construction sector.

Statistics for 2017/18 are due to be published in October 2019.

The most recent statistics on apprenticeships starts by industry sector cover the academic years 2012/13 to 2016/17 and are published on GOV.UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/apprenticeships-in-england-by-industry-characteristics.

In 2016/17 there were:

• 36,170 starts in the manufacturing sector;
• 1,620 starts in the energy sector; and
• 31,610 starts in the construction sector.

Statistics for 2017/18 are due to be published in October 2019.

Ensuring that our children have the digital and computing skills needed for the future is a key priority of this government. Demand for high-level skills in computing will continue to grow in the years ahead and will be crucial to supporting a successful economy.

To meet the demand for high-level skills in computing, the government has introduced computing as a statutory national curriculum subject at all four key stages and reformed the computer science GCSE and A Level. The reformed GCSE, introduced for first teaching from September 2016, aims to ensure that all pupils understand the fundamental principles of computer science, including knowledge on artificial intelligence, programming, coding and data representation. The reformed A level places emphasis on programming, algorithms and problem solving.

In March 2018, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, committed to making no further changes to the national curriculum beyond those that had already been announced in response to teacher feedback. Currently there are no plans to make further changes to the national curriculum during this Parliament.

In November 2018 DfE launched the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE), backed by £84 million in new funding. The NCCE is run by a coalition of STEM Learning, the British Computing Society and Raspberry Pi and supported by industry.

The department is introducing T Levels as a high quality, technical alternative to A levels. The first T levels will start in September 2020, with all routes available from September 2022. Digital is one of the first subjects that will be rolled out in 2020. The department is also designing new apprenticeship standards that are more responsive to the needs of business both now and in the future, ensuring that employers can secure the skills they need to succeed.

Finally, the government recently announced further investment to drive up skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science and support more adults to upskill and retrain to progress in their careers or find new employment.

Up to 2,500 people from underrepresented groups will have the opportunity to retrain and become experts in data science and AI, thanks to a £13.5 million investment to fund new degree and Masters conversion courses and scholarships at UK academic institutions over the next three years.

Latest published figures show that from July 2018 to March 2019, there were 460 starts on the level 2 Bricklayer apprenticeship standard. This figure is available here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/804343/Monthly-apprenticeship-starts-fwk-tool_May-2019.xlsx.

We publish other breakdowns on apprenticeship starts regularly in the further education data library: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fe-data-library.

Regarding the records of unpaid overtime for staff working in the department or its executive agencies, the information requested is not held centrally.

The department is committed to the wellbeing of its staff, and discourages long working hours to make sure that staff are able to maintain their work/life balance. Managers have responsibility for making sure that their staff do not work excessive hours.

We are developing a skills system that can drive improvements in social mobility and are doing this by implementing key skills reforms, which although are national policies, will benefit people in all areas and from all backgrounds.

The National Careers Service offers free careers information, advice and guidance to both young people and adults through a website and telephone helpline. Adults are also supported through the local community based service where face to face guidance is available.

The Adult Education Budget is used to engage adults, including those furthest from learning and the workplace, to provide them with the skills and learning they need to equip them for work, an apprenticeship or further learning. It enables more tailored programmes of learning to be made available, which do not need to include a qualification.

Apprenticeships are accessible to people of all ages, and training can be delivered flexibly to meet the needs of people with children returning to part-time work or those needing to re-train. We are making apprenticeships longer and better, with more off-the job training and proper assessment at the end. New apprenticeship standards across all levels are being designed and driven by industry, which is creating higher quality training that will lead to a more skilled and productive economy. The new apprenticeships campaign, Fire It Up, was launched in January 2019. This campaign is working to increase the number of high quality apprenticeships offered and started, by changing the way people think about apprenticeships, demonstrating that they are an aspirational choice for anyone with passion and energy.

We are developing a National Retraining Scheme, which will help prepare adults for the future changes to the economy, including those brought about by automation, and help them to retrain into better jobs. The scheme is being developed and rolled out in stages so that we can learn and adapt to users’ needs as we go. Learning from the career learning pilots, the Construction Skills Fund and the Adult Learning Technology Innovation Fund will inform how we can better engage adults about the opportunities and benefits of training.

We have been working with all local enterprise partnerships in the East Midlands to ensure that Skills Advisory Panels (SAPs) are established by October 2019. SAPs aim to bring together local employers and skills providers, including colleges, independent training providers and universities, to pool knowledge on skills and labour market needs and to work together to understand and address key local challenges, including helping to tackle local skills shortages. SAPs will help address both immediate needs and challenges and look at what is required to help local areas adapt to future labour market changes and to grasp future opportunities. This will help universities, colleges and other providers deliver the skills required by employers, now and in the future.