Apprenticeships

5. What steps her Department is taking to support apprenticeships.

I welcome the new Minister.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Apprenticeships are the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions, but the Department for Education is supporting apprenticeships by introducing new technical and vocational pathways from 14 to 19 years, including new V-levels from 2027, new level 2 pathways and even more T-levels, from which young people can progress through apprenticeships and higher education. These new 14 to 19 qualifications will enable students to progress more easily and on to apprenticeships.

I welcome the Minister to his place and congratulate him on his appointment. The Government are right to focus on the importance of parity between vocational education and academic education. However, when comparing the academic year 2025-26 with 2023-24, the number of people who have started apprenticeships has dropped by 9% and the number who have completed has gone down by 17%. With reference to the Minister’s point about vocational pathways, will he update the House on what steps the Government are taking to ensure that they are linked with the needs of industry, so that this in itself does not become an academic exercise?

May I return those congratulations by congratulating the hon. Member on his elevation to the shadow Front Bench, and may I congratulate him, too, on the work he has done on vocational skills, including in his jobs fare in Bromsgrove? It is worth saying that V-levels are precisely designed to tally with what employers want. That is exactly why we are reforming the system to ensure every child will have the right technical education. More broadly, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have said that the parity of esteem between vocational and academic education is exactly what everyone in this country wants.

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

May I put on record my condolences to the Prime Minister on the sad loss of his father? The Education Committee strongly agrees with the Government’s focus on expanding opportunities for apprenticeships and high-quality technical and vocational education across the country, but too often young people who want to pursue apprenticeships are left to do their own research across multiple different platforms with varying application timescales. Last year, the Education Committee recommended that to help young people understand the full range of opportunities available to them and provide parity of esteem, there should be a single point of access for information about apprenticeships alongside vocational, technical and academic courses. Will the new Minister look again at that recommendation and seek to ensure young people wishing to do apprenticeships and vocational and technical courses are just as well supported as their peers who are applying for university?

I thank my hon. Friend for all the hard work the Education Committee has done on this topic. She is right that there should be parity of esteem, and the equivalent of a UCAS system for children who are going into technical education. Baroness Smith is looking at precisely that subject, and we aim to come up with some answers soon.

You will recall, Mr Speaker—as will the Minister, from his earlier life—that when I was the Skills Minister, we had the biggest number of apprenticeships in modern history. I did that because I believe in elevating the practical, but, too often, careers advice and guidance delivered in schools drives people down an academic route to study degrees that have neither academic rigour nor economic value. Will the Minister look again at the advice and guidance given to people, so that aptitudes, talents and taste can be met by good-quality vocational and technical education?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his hard work on this subject as the former Skills Minister. The House is in agreement on the issue. The Prime Minister rightly says that we should be focusing on problem solving rather than point scoring. Given that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned apprenticeship starts, it would be remiss of me not to point out that they have gone up by 8.7% under this Government, whereas apprenticeship starts collapsed under the last Government since 2020.

Further education colleges play a crucial role in apprenticeships and in supporting education. Will the Minister tell me what extra measures the Government are bringing in to ensure that further education colleges naturally provide a wide range of education and technical skills to apprentices?

My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for FE in his constituency, as are many Members across the House. He is right about FE, and many specialists who are engaged in teaching further education and vocational skills are addressing the point he raises. That is why many of them support a move to V-Levels, because they are aligned with what employers want. Employers are telling us that they want those job skills to be more in tune with academic skills, and that is what we are delivering.