Meeting of the Parliament 13 May 2015
I am running out of time—sorry.
Another concern is that, although I welcome the Government’s announcements on modern apprenticeship starts, we need to look at modern apprenticeship achievements. If we look at 2014-15, we can see that there were 19,500 modern apprenticeship starts, but 13,500 achieved a modern apprenticeship qualification. In other words, out of 19,500 MA starts, 6,000 did not achieve a qualification—the number who achieved a qualification was down by 6 per cent on the previous year. The point is we should not measure just enrolments in the programme, because success should be judged by the number who complete the programme successfully. A 28 per cent rate of non-achievement is not acceptable.
I move amendment S4M-13112.2, to insert at end:
“; urges the Scottish Government to have a renewed focus on delivering more higher level apprenticeships as promised in its response to the final report of the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce in June 2014; recognises that there is a gender imbalance in the delivery of modern apprenticeships, both across the frameworks and the levels, with significantly fewer women training to levels 4 and 5 and in subjects including construction and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) industries; understands that less than 1% of apprentices in Scotland have a declared disability, compared with 7.8% in England, and considers that this disparity should be reviewed as a priority, and believes that the decision by the UK Government to abolish employers’ national insurance contributions for apprentices aged under 25 from April 2016 will enable businesses to employ more apprentices”.
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