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On 7 April, the government will take the historical step of charging all UK employers (with a pay bill of £3 million or more) a 0.5% tax on that pay bill. Branded as the Apprenticeship Levy, this is a central component of the apprenticeship reform programme that began back in 2012 with the Richard Review of Apprenticeships. A fundamental driver of the coalition – and Conservative – governments’ ideology to increase the profile and uptake of apprenticeships has been employer ownership, or, as a former skills minister put it: ‘for employers to have skin in the game’. In order to achieve this, the Levy was proposed and will be enacted this year to ensure that employers have a stake (their own payroll) being invested in apprenticeships, with the ultimate intention that employers will be looking to recoup this tax through negotiating a price with providers to offer apprenticeships in their industry. According to the Department for Education, ‘the levy will allow us to double investment in apprenticeships by 2020 from 2010 levels, to £2.5bn.’

Today, Theresa May set out her overarching vision for Britain as it leaves the European Union. After receiving criticism for a number of general statements about her negotiation strategy, the Prime Minister set out a ‘truly global vision’ of a British future of working outside of Europe.

Planning your curriculum? We’re here to help! The below infographic features qualifications to consider for this year in a variety of sectors, plus details of our Study Programme and Functional Skills offers. Just get in touch with us if you’d like more information on any of our qualifications.

With less than three months until the launch of the Institute for Apprenticeships, and six months since the hunt for permanent board members began, the government finally wants your feedback on what the Institute should do. But you won’t find any questions or options to choose from in the ‘Draft Strategic Guidance’, something we are accustomed to from previous apprenticeship ‘consultations’. It seems we’ve moved into a new and pragmatic phase of policy making, where feedback should simply be emailed before the end of January to an old BIS account: [email protected]

At the Charity Commission annual meeting, the Prime Minister pledged to help schools and companies in the UK deal with the ‘burning injustice’ and stigma surrounding mental illness. Demanding a new approach from government and society as a whole, Theresa May said that mental health had been ‘dangerously disregarded’ as secondary to physical health for too long. Mrs May outlined proposed measures to transform the way we deal with mental health problems across society, with a focus on children and young people.

‘Skills’ is a slippery term in English public policy.  Read a story about investment in skills and you often find a report of government investment in universities.   Read about devolution of skills however and it’s unambiguous – skills in this context equals FE, though oddly only FE for adults.  Devolution is an even more slippery concept so the two combined spell double trouble. The government has agreed that the ‘commissioning’ of adult skills will be devolved as part of a number of ‘deals’ cut with local authority areas covering nearly half the country; but not all the FE budget will be devolved even there.

It’s the time of year when many of us make New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions for the next 12 months, such as to save more money, exercise more, eat more healthily or travel to new places. According to a recent ComRes poll, the fifth most popular resolution is to learn a new skill or hobby. While it’s encouraging that so many people aspire to step outside their comfort zone and learn something new, this is unfortunately a resolution that’s quite often broken, whether this is due to lack of time, financial constraints or simply other things taking priority in our already busy lives.

The Education Funding Agency (EFA) has published its annual funding letter, providing an update on how 16-18 learners will be funded on a Study Programme from August 2017. The key points in the letter are as follows:

Advanced Learner Loans (loans) have been a feature of the funding of adult education and training programmes for the last three years , and despite the funding available for them rising to £268 million in 2016-17, evidence shows that the take up of loans has not been as high as expected. So what are the issues on both the demand and supply sides of the adult learning market that have caused this? Loans were previously only available to adults aged 24 and over on the first day of their programme and for learning aims at levels 3 and 4. Since August of 2016, their scope has been extended to include adults aged 19 and over, and they are now available for learning aims from levels 3 to 6. The aim was to remove some of the barriers to participation by adults required to find 50% of the cost of fees for their programmes, and also to encourage more adults to share the cost  and ‘invest’ in their own learning. The learner applies for a loan from Student Loans Company (SLC) to cover the whole cost of the fee they are charged by the provider for an eligible learning aim, e.g. Access to HE diploma.

This week, we hosted two live Q&A sessions on Twitter, with our expert Cailean Carvalho answering questions around the forthcoming apprenticeship levy and end point assessment (EPA). Here’s a summary of all the questions and answers from the sessions. Thank you to those who participated – we hope you found it useful. If you’d like any further information, please get in touch with us on 0191 239 8000 or email [email protected].