The DfE has published the further education and skills statistics in England for the full 2017 to 2018 academic year. The figures show that apprenticeships numbers fell by almost a quarter compared to the year before. FE Week report that the figures show there were 375,800 apprenticeship starts in 2017/18, a drop of 24% on 2016/17’s total of 494,400, and a decrease of 26% on the 2015/16 figure of 509,400. Starts at level two showed the biggest year-on-year drop, from 260,700 in 2016/17 to 161,400 in 2017/18, which represents a fall of 38%.
There are signs that the DfE are showing an interest in understanding the reasons for the fall in starts as a they published a call for expressions of interest to carry out research to “improve understanding of the causes and effects of changes to the number of apprenticeship starts at level two”, more comment is on FE Week here.