Personal or domestic factors such as a better job offer, mental health issues or caring responsibilities are among the key reasons for apprentices dropping out, new Department for Education research has found.
And when it comes to apprenticeship-related factors for withdrawals, the most common reasons were that apprentices felt they did not have enough time for training, poor quality training and badly run programmes.
Former skills minister Gillian Keegan ordered an investigation into the “astonishingly” high drop-out rate for apprenticeships last year after original 2019/20 figures showed 39.8 per cent of learners on the government’s new-style “standards” withdrew before completing. This figure was later revised up to 53.4 per cent after statisticians spotted an “error”.
Figures for 2020/21 show 47 per cent of apprentices on standards dropped out.
