Appenticeships policy risks poor value for money

New analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found that the government’s apprenticeship target for the public sector will not deliver value for money.

The ‘blanket policy’, which would see at least one-in-five new hires at companies with over 250 employees having to be an apprentice, has been labelled as an ineffective way to improve skills in the public sector, and could result in inefficient ways of working.

Additionally, the IFS warned that the target of 600,000 new apprenticeships a year in this Parliament, itself a 20 per cent increase on the level in 2014-15, risks ‘increasing quantity at the expense of quality’.

Jonathan Cribb, author of the report, said: “With the subsidies for apprentices’ training costs at 90 per cent or 100 per cent, employers are encouraged to take on more apprentices. But this also provides them with little or no incentive to choose a training provider with a lower price.

“In addition, the specific targets for most public sector employers in England to employ apprentices could lead to costly, and potentially damaging, re-organisations, and should be dropped.”