To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many heavy vehicle fitter Apprenticeships have been completed in (a) England and (b) Merseyside in each of the last five years, broken down by sex. (78433)

I have been asked to reply.

A key success criterion for Apprenticeships from the outset has been that the programme should be open to all young people regardless of gender, ethnic origin or disability and it should provide equal access particularly to those from potentially socially disadvantaged or marginalised groups. The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) has worked hard to establish and build on the Apprenticeship Frameworks and procedures required for successful equality. The Apprenticeships Approvals Group (independently chaired by the Skills for Business Network ie Sector Skills Council led) have a key role to play in ensuring that Apprenticeship Frameworks make all reasonable adjustments to maximise participation from diverse groups.

The LSC maintains a website detailing starts, leavers and completions of individual frameworks http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/partners/frameworks/ apprenticeshipsdata/. However, published figures for completions are not broken down by geographical area or sex. For this reason Mark Haysom, the council’s Chief Executive, has written to my hon. Friend with this information and a copy of his reply has been placed in the House Library.

Letter from Rob Wye, dated 28 June 2006:

I am responding on behalf of Mark Haysom, due to him currently being on annual leave, to your Parliamentary Question that asked the number of completed Heavy Vehicle Fitter Apprenticeships in England and Greater Merseyside, broken down by gender in each of the last 5 years.

The Vehicle Fitting Apprenticeship framework was implemented on 1st September 2005. This is in effect its first year for apprentices to enrol onto and as yet there is no usable framework completion data at any geographical level.

Prior to 1st September 2005 there were more generic Apprenticeship frameworks in operation for the Retail Motor Industry. An analysis of these framework completions where the NVQ within the framework is for “Vehicle Fitting” shows the following results,

Specific information regarding heavy vehicle fitting is not available at framework level or at NVQ qualification level, hence this response can only look at vehicle fitting in general.

The Learning and Skills Council publishes regular statistical information on Apprenticeships including framework completion data on its website (www.apprenticeships.org.uk). The information is provided for each Apprenticeship framework and as such the volume of completers nationally will be provided in future updates.

Consistent and high quality data is only available from the first full academic year following the commencement of the Learning and Skills Council in April 2001. For this reason the table above only shows information for the past three full academic years.

I trust this provides the information you require.