Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning

Make provision about apprenticeships, education, training and children’s services; to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996; to establish the Young People’s Learning Agency for England, the office of Chief Executive of Skills Funding, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation and the School Support Staff Negotiating Body and to make provision about those bodies and that office; to make provision about the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority; to make provision about schools and institutions within the further education sector; to make provision about student loans; and for connected purposes.

The Bill introduces a wide range of measures covering apprenticeships, learning and skills and educational provision.

Key areas

• Provides for a statutory framework for apprenticeships and creates a right to an apprenticeship for suitably qualified 16-18 year olds
• Introduces a right for employees to request time away from their duties to undertake training, and places a corresponding duty on employers to consider such requests seriously and to be able to refuse them only for specified business reasons
• Dissolves the Learning and Skills Council
• Transfers the responsibility for funding education and training for 16-18-year-olds to local authorities
• Makes provisions with respect to the education of offenders
• Creates the Young Person’s Learning Agency, the Skills Funding Agency, a new regulatory body for qualifications (Ofqual), and a new agency to carry out the non-regulatory functions currently performed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
• Strengthens the accountability of children’s services
• Amends intervention powers in respect of schools which are causing concern
• Establishes a new parental complaints service
• Changes the school inspection arrangements
• Creates a new negotiating body for pay and conditions for school support staff
• Makes provisions in respect of pupil and student behaviour.