Dr. Mary-Liz Trant:

As I mentioned, there is a piece of work under way on completion rates across apprenticeships that tracks back over the last five years. Obviously there is now a range of programmes and there are 30,000 apprentices in the system. We looked at that work in advance of today's meeting because we presumed it would be of interest. The initial emerging findings are really strong completion rates as in that those who do not complete are about 11%, on average. The completion rate for newer programmes is very strong as there is very little drop-out. The rate for craft apprenticeships is slightly higher. The overall average drop-out rate is about 11% so the completion rate is 89%. Obviously there is a huge range of published completion rates across higher education and it is very strong. It is important that we examine why there is non-completion, if any. We must analyse whether it has something to do with the quality of the programme or other valid choices. We are focusing on that as a priority piece of research and we aim to produce findings later this year.