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Apprenticeships: What the new DfE statistics tell us
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This morning, the Department for Education (DfE) published figures on the number of apprenticeships that were started in July 2019 - the final month of the 2018-19 academic year. And although the numbers are still provisional, they provide us with a pretty clear picture of the apprenticeships sector.
The big stories this year do seem a little familiar: there were fewer apprenticeship starts than in the years before the apprenticeship levy and wider regulatory forms came into play.
Background: Degree apprenticeships: What you need to know
News: Apprentices voice concerns about off-the-job training
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Starts at level 2 (GCSE-equivalent) continued to fall, while those at higher education-equivalent levels (levels 4+) continued to rise. However, there are trends (ever so slightly) below the radar: how changes to the apprenticeship system have affected 16- to 18-year-olds as a whole, and what this could mean for 16- to 18-year-olds living in less well-off places.
But first, as always, the headline figures. Figure one shows that there were 389,000 apprenticeship starts in 2018-19, up by about 13,000 from last year but still considerably below the number of starts in pre-reform years.
Apprentices aged 25 and over
![Department of education apprenticeship stats](https://assets.tes.com/magazine-attachments/s3fs-public/styles/684_width/public/inline-files/as-1.png.webp?itok=54ZcNuD3)
Of course, there’s more change beneath the surface. For instance, the number of apprentices aged 25 and over starting programmes at level 2 fell by 59 per cent between 2015-16 (the last full academic year before the reforms came in) and 2018-19. And yet, the number of apprentices aged 25 and over starting programmes at level 4+ grew by 157 per cent over the same time-frame - albeit from a low base.
Since so many of these striking changes seem to have occurred among apprentices at the upper-end of the age scale (ie those 25 and older), there’s been far less focus on those at the bottom-end: apprentices aged 16 to 18.
Figure two focuses on them: it shows the number of apprenticeships that were started by 16- to 18-year-olds from 2015-16 to 2018-19. The number of starts in this group has been falling since even before 2017 (when the introduction of the apprenticeship levy and regulatory reforms came in), worsening each year.
![Department of education, apprenticeship stats](https://assets.tes.com/magazine-attachments/s3fs-public/styles/684_width/public/inline-files/as-2.png.webp?itok=HAFLb7H9)
Overall, there were 27 per cent per cent fewer starts among 16- to 18-year-olds in 2018-19 than there were in 2015-16.
Again, however, we see different patterns beneath the surface: over the same time frame the number of 16- to 18-year-old starts at level 2 fell by 38 per cent and the number at level 3 fell by 9 per cent. By contrast, the number at levels 4+ more than doubled, from 1,800 in 2015-16 to 3,900 in 2018-19.
Disadvantaged versus advantaged apprenticeship starts
Sixteen to 18-year-olds, like any age group, aren’t a homogenous bunch - so it’s unlikely that these changes have been distributed evenly. For instance, we at Resolution Foundation are worried that the growing number of higher-level apprenticeships are going, disproportionately, to those from better-off backgrounds.
Figure three sums up the number of 16- to 18-year-olds who started an apprenticeship in 2015-16 and 2017-18 (the latest available figures) according to both apprenticeship level and whether that apprentice lived in a worse-off (areas classed as having high levels of deprivation) or a better-off (low-levels of deprivation) area.
![Department of education apprenticeship stats](https://assets.tes.com/magazine-attachments/s3fs-public/styles/684_width/public/inline-files/as-3.png.webp?itok=ypR4bySy)
In the past, there were more young people from deprived areas starting apprenticeships (55,100) than there were from better-off areas (48,700). And although the total number of starts among 16- to 18-year-olds fell across the board between 2015-16 and 2017-18, that overall fall was particularly acute for those from less well-off areas (23 per cent) than from better-off areas (14 per cent). Perhaps even more worryingly, the changes in apprenticeship level that we outlined above have had different effects on these two groups of young people - as figure four illustrates.
![Department of education apprenticeship stats](https://assets.tes.com/magazine-attachments/s3fs-public/styles/684_width/public/inline-files/as4.png.webp?itok=canCwiDt)
While both groups experienced a reduction in starts at levels 2 and 3, these falls were larger for those from less well-off areas (31 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively) than for better-off areas (6 and 1 per cent). And while both groups saw a rise in the number of apprenticeships at level 4+ (even if from a low base), that rise was much larger for those from better-off areas (+82 per cent) than for those from less well-off areas (+58 per cent). In fact, there were twice as many young people from better-off areas than from less well-off areas starting higher-level apprenticeships in 2017-18.
‘A focus on quality, not quantity’
Of course we need to remember that these figures are from 2017-18 - we could see a shift once we get access to numbers for 2018-19, hopefully by the end of the calendar year.
All in all, however, these patterns underscore a central message: don’t just focus on the headline numbers as the real story lies beneath the surface.
At the Resolution Foundation, we think that the apprenticeships should be designed to offer a clear route to a good career for young people and new starters - that means we need to focus on not just on quantity but also on training quality.
So to that end, we’re disappointed to see a continued fall in the number of starts going to young people in 2018-19. In future we hope to see that number rise, and be spread more evenly.
Kathleen Henehan is research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation
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