Last week and following a spectacular and near 60% plunge in the number of people registering for apprenticeships between May-July 2017 in England as compared with a year earlier, the UK government revealed it had observed yet another year-on-year drop, this time a 27% fall between August and October. Although the goal of 3 million apprentices by 2020 seems unattainable, Lizzie Crowley, Skills Advisor at the HR organization the CIPD (The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) explains in an interview with Planet Labor why apprenticeship is struggling to succeed in Great Britain.
- When these statistics were released companies immediately blamed the recent apprenticeship levy(1). Why is that?
Lizzie Crowley. The link with that fall and the apprenticeship levy is obvious as the introduction of the tax was in April. It has a lot of new rules, like the 20% job training rule, quite difficult to adopt. And also a lot of bureaucracy.
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