Small business apprenticeship starts plummet

The number of people starting an apprenticeship in small businesses has dropped by almost half since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, according to a report from the CIPD.

The HR body’s “Devolution and evolution in UK skills policy: Finding common ground across the four nations report”, revealed there were 123,800 apprenticeship starts in SMEs in England in 2020-21, compared to 241,000 in 2016-17.

In larger companies with more than 250 employees, the drop has been 14%, while overall the number of people taking up apprenticeships is down by 31% since 2017.

One of the aims of the apprenticeship levy was to support smaller employers to access funding for skills development by enabling them to tap into larger businesses’ contributions to the national training ‘pot’.

Statistics from the Department for Education released earlier this month found that around two-thirds of all starts in 2023 were funded by the levy, but fewer disadvantaged and younger learners were accessing the funding.

Instead, employers were often using the funding to support higher-level qualifications such as degree apprenticeships and to train existing employees.

The CIPD’s analysis suggests that the apprenticeship levy has failed to reverse a decline in employer training since 2011, with investment in learning and development dropping by 19% since then. UK investment per employee, at around £1,778 per person, is around half the EU average.

Sixty per cent of employers in the UK…