Breakdown of Skills Development Scotland Modern Apprenticeships: FOI release

Information requested

1. In the 2022/23 budget the Scottish Government allocated Skills Development Scotland funding for at least 25,000 Modern Apprenticeship starts. What is the basis for the 25,000 figure?
2. How regularly is this figure reviewed?
3. How many modern apprenticeship starts have there been in each of the past 10 financial years?

Response

In the 2022/23 budget. the Scottish Government allocated skills development Scotland funding for at least 25,000 Modern Apprenticeship starts. What is the basis for the 25,000 figure?

An annual Letter of Guidance issued by Scottish Ministers sets out what Skills Development Scotland (SDS) is expected to deliver from their budget each financial year, but does not set out specific budget allocation against each individual programme. SDS were asked in their Letter of Guidance for 2022/2023 to deliver at least 25,000 new Modern Apprenticeship (MA) starts.

In 2011/12, the Scottish Government introduced an annual target of 25,000 new Modern Apprenticeship starts per year. In 2014, the Scottish Government announced that the target for new MA starts would increase year by year from 25,000 to 30,000 by 2020-21. This was in response to Recommendation 10 in the Final Report from the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce, published in June 2014.

Annual targets were subsequently set each year to demonstrate progress as follows:

• 26,000 in 2016-17
• 27,000 in 2017-18
• 28,000 in 2018-19
• 29,000 in 2019-20

From 2018/19, Graduate Apprenticeship starts were included in the apprenticeship target.

It was the intention to deliver 30,000 MA starts in 2020-21 however this target was subsequently removed due to the unprecedented impact of the pandemic, with the aim instead to maximise apprenticeship starts. For 2022/23, a target of at least 25,000 starts was agreed, based on what had been achieved in 2021-22 and to allow time for the economy, businesses and disruption of learning to start to recover. This aligned with the Scottish Government’s commitment to build back up to 30,000 apprenticeship starts as part of our recovery from the pandemic.

How regularly is this figure reviewed?

An annual Letter of Guidance sets out what Skills Development Scotland (SDS) are expected to deliver from their budget each financial year based on Ministerial priorities and SDS were asked in their Letter of Guidance for 2022/2023 to deliver at least 25,000 new Modern Apprenticeship (MA) starts. With regards to the monitoring of Modern Apprenticeship (MA) volumes, official MA statistics are published by SDS quarterly, including the number of starts, and are cumulative throughout the year. These statistics can be found on the SDS corporate website Modern Apprenticeships | Skills Development Scotland

How many modern apprenticeship starts have their been in each of the past 10 financial years?

Modern Apprenticeship starts by Year (noting Modern Apprenticeship 2022/23 Q4 (Year End) statistics are expected to be published in May 2023)

Year	Total
2012/13	25,691
2013/14	25,284
2014/15	25,247
2015/16	25,818
2016/17	26,262
2017/18	27,145
2018/19	27,270
2019/20	27,875
2020/21	18,655
2021/22	25,401
2022/23 Quarter 2	12,593

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