I have always been a huge supporter of apprenticeship schemes. In the last year, 550 young people in Castle Point started an apprenticeship and many thousands more have done so since 2010, meaning our young people are gaining the skills they need to secure good jobs. Ending degrees where students have poor outcomes will build on that progress by making sure people go on into worthwhile roles and helping businesses make the most of fantastic local talent. 

Rebecca Harris

Boosting Apprenticeships:

The Conservatives want young people to secure the best opportunities with a good well-paid job, which means we need to crack down on university degrees which make people poorer at the expense of the taxpayer.

That is why the Conservatives have set out a clear plan to deliver 100,000 more apprenticeships per year by the end of the next Parliament. This will make sure the Conservatives continue with the rollout of their successful apprenticeship programme which has seen over 5.8 million people get the skills and opportunities they deserve since 2010. 550 local young people started an apprenticeship in Castle Point over the last year and these reforms will open this opportunity to hundreds more.

How will this be done?

This will be done through replacing the worst-performing university courses with high-skilled apprenticeships.

The UK is home to four of the top ten universities globally with a growing number of people from disadvantaged backgrounds now attending, which play a significant role in boosting local economies. However, too many university degrees are leaving students worse off and saddled with debt. One in five courses make people poorer so our new law would grant new powers to the universities regulator to close those that are underperforming and have the highest dropout rates. Every penny saved will be invested into new apprenticeship opportunities.

We are already fully funding young people up to the age of 21 to do an apprenticeship in SMEs, increasing the amount of money apprenticeship levy payers can give to SMEs to hire an apprentice and putting all apprenticeships on UCAS so young people can compare apprenticeships in the same way they would a university degree. We have one of the most powerful apprenticeship systems in the world, reaching nearly 700 different occupations, giving people the opportunity to choose their life path – backed by £2.7 billion in 2024-25.

Funding:

100,000 more apprenticeships will cost £885 million in 2029-30. We will pay for this by cutting the poorest performing university degrees, this will save money as more student loans will be paid back, meaning the taxpayer won’t have to pick up the tab instead.

What would Labour do?

Labour would halve the number of apprenticeships by allowing 50 per cent of Apprenticeship Levy funds to go to other non-apprenticeship training, meaning worse life opportunities for young people. Labour want businesses to spend half of their apprenticeship levy on non-apprenticeship training which could reduce apprenticeships to just 140,000, every year less than half the number of apprenticeships. This means SMEs being left with no funding to hire an apprentice. The Institute for Fiscal Studies have said that broadening the levy creates a ‘significant risk’ that it ‘simply pays for training that would have already taken’.