£1.2 billion wasted on ‘fake apprenticeships’ - Sector Response to EDSK 'Runaway Training' report

Apprenticeships in the UK are enjoying a current period of popularity, however, more needs to be done before they are treated like academic qualifications, argues Lawrence Barton in FE News.

A recent report by education think tank EDSK found that employers and universities have been mislabelling training courses as ‘apprenticeships’ as they compete to use up the funding raised by the apprenticeship levy.

The report called ‘Runaway training’ shows that these ‘fake apprenticeships’ have accounted for 50 per cent of all the courses started since the levy was introduced in 2017, and £1.2 billion of apprenticeship funding has already been committed by the government to deliver these courses.