A fifth of Apprenticeship Levy payers still don’t understand the scheme
A fifth (18 per cent) of apprenticeship levy-paying employers still don’t understand how the scheme works, three months after it was introduced.
Research published today by The Open University also revealed that a further 2 per cent of the 200 senior managers questioned knew nothing about the levy at all.
However, 85 per cent believe the levy will have a positive impact on their organisation and 87 per cent were confident it would benefit UK productivity and the economy. More than half (54 per cent) were already making use of the levy and a further 25 per cent said they had plans to – but 18 per cent had no current plans to use the levy.
“While it’s relatively encouraging that half of the businesses are already making use of the levy, it’s concerning that there is still a substantial proportion of employers that have no current plans to use it at all,” said Lizzie Crowley, skills adviser at the CIPD. “There’s evidence that these employers will, therefore, write it off as tax and not use it to fund apprenticeships, while others use it to rebadge existing training provision.”
Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), pointed to official government data that showed an “encouraging jump” in the number of high-level apprenticeships starts during 2016-17, with this trend expected to continue under the levy. He acknowledged, however, that there was still a “big job to do” in explaining to a significant number of employers the benefits of using the levy funding.
Read more at the CIPD website.