A think tank has warned that the Apprenticeship Levy risks “increasing quantity at the risk of quality”.
According to The Times a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has warned that the tax risks repeating the mistakes of the past, being poor value for money and causing particular damage to the public sector, a think tank has warned.
The report claims that only “a fraction” of the £2.8bn expected to be raised by 2020 will be spent on apprentices and that Government spending is likely to increase by only £640 million between now and 2020.
The report criticises the Government’s target of 600,000 new apprentices a year in this parliament, a 20% rise on 2015 and says it has “failed to make a convincing case for such a large and rapid expansion in apprenticeships”, amid “wildly optimistic claims about the extra economic activity or earnings such investment in apprenticeships could generate”.
Neil Amin Smith, an author of the report, said: “We desperately need an effective system for supporting training of young people in the UK.
“But the new apprenticeship levy, and associated targets, risk repeating the mistakes of recent decades.”
