UK Apprenticeship Levy: FOI release

Information requested

1. To ask the Scottish Government to provide an annual breakdown of monies received from the levy since April 2017.

2. To ask the Scottish Government for an indication of the annual breakdown of how much money, since April 2017, has been reinvested at a national level to fund apprenticeship training.

3. If there is a surplus – ie, more money has been received from the levy than spent – how much of the surplus has been spent and what has it funded.

4. If there are surplus funds as yet unspent, please indicate where the money is held and its intended use(s)

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don’t have this information are explained below.

Questions 1,3 & 4

The Scottish Government does not have the information you requested because on 14 November 2016, the UK Government announced the Scottish Government’s settlement from the UK Apprenticeship Levy based on a population share of projected revenue for the first three years only.

From 2020-21, Scotland receives a Barnett Formula share of funding via the block grant in the usual way. The Scottish Government does not receive a specific allocation of Apprenticeship Levy revenue.

As a result, the Scottish Government has no direct control or responsibility for its operation and we have not had a breakdown of Levy funding for Scotland since 2020-21. This means that we cannot directly link funds realised from the apprenticeship levy to any funding stream.

The Scottish Government’s budget sets out how the block grant is spent in Scotland and can be found here: Scottish Budget: 2024 to 2025 - gov.scot

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

Question 2

I enclose a copy of the information held by the Scottish Government in relation to the annual breakdown of money invested at a national level to fund apprenticeship training since 2019. We do not hold information prior to this date.

Table 1: Split of Graduate Apprenticeship (GA) Funding Across Skills Development Scotland (SDS), Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) from 2019/20 to 2023/24

Academic Year	SFC funding (£m)	SAAS funding (£m)	SDS funding (£m)
2019/20	-	-	12
2020/21	-	-	17
2021/22	7	2	17
2022/23	15	3	10
2023/24	23*	5	6

*Note: SFC funding for 2023/24 should be treated as notional

Note: Figures are those provided to the Scottish Government by SAAS, SDS and SFC and are rounded to the nearest £, million (cash terms)

Note: SAAS provides tuition fees only for Graduate Apprenticeships. SAAS do not provide funding for the other apprenticeship schemes. This funding was only provided from 2021-22 onwards.

Table 2: Split of Foundation Apprenticeships (FA) Funding across Skills Development Scotland (SDS), Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) from 2019/20 to 2023/24

Academic Year	SFC funding (£m)	SAAS funding (£m)	SDS funding (£m)
2019/20	-	-	14
2020/21	9	-	15
2021/22	9	-	12
2022/23	9	-	9
2023/24	10	-	8

*Note: SFC funding for 2023/24 should be treated as notional

Note: Figures are those provided to the Scottish Government by SAAS, SDS and SFC and are rounded to the nearest £, million (cash terms)

Table 3: Split of Modern Apprenticeship (MA) Funding Across Skills Development Scotland (SDS), Scottish Funding Council (SFC) and Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) from 2019/20 to 2023/24

Academic Year	SFC funding (£m)	SAAS funding (£m)	SDS funding (£m)
2019/20	50**	-	82
2020/21	50**	-	80*
2021/22	50**	-	78
2022/23	50**	-	76
2023/24	50**	-	84

*The £80m MA figure includes £19m for Apprenticeship Employer Grant

**The figure of £50m funding for MAs is notional and based on the level of MA activity in college’s Further Education Statistics return applied to our overall levels of funding.

Note: Figures are those provided to the Scottish Government by SAAS, SDS and SFC and are rounded to the nearest £, million (cash terms)

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.