Last year’s £1,000 uplift to adult care apprenticeship funding is not enough to entice training providers back to the market, as the number of new apprentices plummets, an FE Week investigation has found.
Nearly 200 training providers have ceased delivery of the level 2 adult care worker and level 3 lead adult care worker apprenticeships since 2019. Annual starts on the programmes have nosedived. In 2022/23, there were 10,500 fewer new care apprentices than in 2018/19.
FE Week identified 108 training providers, colleges and councils that delivered care apprenticeships in 2020/21 that didn’t in 2022/23. Of those, 23 independent training providers have closed and just six have re-started care apprenticeships this academic year.
In recent years, major care training providers Qube Learning and Quest Vocational Training also closed their doors.
