Skills minister restates stance on apprenticeship levy funding |
Skills minister Gillian Keegan is standing firm on her position that apprenticeship levy funding should only be used for apprenticeships, saying it has proven to be the best way to build a “solid” skills pipeline. Organisations including the Confederation of British Industry had hoped to fund a wider array of training with the levy. Keegan said her stance was a response to the “madness” of organisations recruiting people and building “skills pipelines” from overseas, instead of using home grown talent. “When I look at what the apprenticeship levy has actually done,” she told delegates at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference, “it has forced a shift in how employers work with the Department for Education and training providers to build the skills pipeline.” She said the sector and government had “lost focus” on a skills pipeline for British workers, compared to 20 or 30 years ago, due to “lots of global movements, lots of talents available from other countries.” She said British employers had “largely relied on . . . bringing in global talent to fulfil many of our skills gaps,” but with the pandemic and related global talent shortages, that approach “isn’t going to work, so we have to build really solid skills pipelines in this country, and we owe that actually also to the people of this country to do that.” |
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