by Mark Corney
The key lesson to emerge from the consultation on the funding reform of apprenticeships in England which closed on October 1st is the need to segment them by age.*
Use of the catch-all term ‘apprenticeships’ clouds rather than clarifies the decisions to be taken in the build-up to the Autumn Statement on Wednesday, December 4th.
The funding consultation asked the apprenticeship sector to consider the introduction of mandatory employer cash contributions of 30%, as well three options for distributing public funding, namely direct employer contracting, reimbursement through PAYE and retention of the provider system. But a considered assessment of these propositions really requires a segmenting of apprenticeships by age.
