The government has launched an expansion of youth apprenticeships to 50,000 places over the next three years in an effort to tackle unemployment among young people.
Sir Keir Starmer said he was “on a mission” to boost training schemes as he met apprentices at car manufacturer McLaren in Woking the day after driver Lando Norris won the Formula 1 world champion title.
The number of young people starting apprenticeships has fallen by almost 40% in the past decade, and the figures show nearly a million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in work or learning.
The expansion will include removing the 5% levy for apprentices under 25 and offering new apprenticeships in AI, hospitality, and engineering.
Speaking about his father being an apprentice who “went to night school” to learn how to be a tool-making engineer, Sir Keir said this was “every bit as difficult and complicated” as going to university.
“I went to university and I’ve always thought that we don’t value the two equally – and we should,” he said.
“University is a good thing to do; I’m not going to knock it. That’s what I did, but being an apprentice is an equally good thing to do. That’s what my dad did and he was a highly skilled engineer and toolmaker.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves earmarked £725m over the next three years for the apprenticeship scheme expansion in the budget, and short courses will be offered from spring next year.
A pilot programme allowing mayors to connect young people with local employers and apprenticeship opportunities will get a £140m chunk of the funding, although it’s not yet clear how that money will be used.
Rose Atkinson’s 27-year-old daughter has autism and has just graduated with a 2:1 degree in animation, but is now too old to get onto the youth apprenticeship scheme, which cuts off at 25.
“I’ve asked various organisations about why 25 is the magic number and no-one can give me an answer,” she said.
“But for someone who is on the spectrum that doesn’t help my daughter – she needs a long tern internship so that her degree is not a waste.
“Disabled young adults have the capacity to work and desperately want to work, especially disabled graduate students but don’t stand a chance when its taken them longer than others to get to be graduate.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today , Skills Minister Baroness Jacqui Smith said the focus was on reforming the apprenticeship system.
Our main priority is to improve apprenticeships.
“The real priority for us with apprenticeships is to put right what we’ve seen over the last 10 years, which is a reduction of 40% in young people starting apprenticeships – apprenticeships which can really set you on the route to a high-skilled job and the sort of earnings and the sort of jobs that young people want,” she said.
“So we are making a determined shift of apprenticeship training back towards young people again.
“We’re fully funding apprenticeship training for young people in small and medium-sized businesses, unlike previously, and we are reforming the rest of the apprenticeship system so that we can offer short courses for adults.”
On complaints from larger companies that changes to the levy will make it less efficient, she said, “We’re open to the concerns that employers have and how we actually deliver it.”
The builder’s merchant Travis Perkins welcomed the expansion, with the director of skills and apprenticeships Andy Rayner saying the announcement would be “significant” for the construction sector.
“Our industry needs more people coming through and these measures will make it easier for learners and employers to commit to apprenticeship routes,” he said.
Lib Dem spokesman Ian Sollom said Labour ministers needed to listen closely to businesses.
“Labour’s approach so far has been to sacrifice standards for headlines – pressing on with apprenticeship reforms that employers across construction, care, and manufacturing are calling ‘dumbed down’, and risking young people being unable to get the professional recognition they need to work,” he said.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden also told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg about plans to create 350,000 training and work experience placements to get young people off Universal Credit and into jobs.
An extra £820m will be spent on creating 55,000 six-month placements from next April for those who have been on a benefit for 18 months or more.
McFadden’s Conservative counterpart Helen Whately said the scheme showed that Labour had “no plan for growth, no plan to create real jobs”.
