Department for Education written question – answered at on 20 July 2020.
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide financial support to training and skills providers to ensure the provision of suitable resources to train, re-train and upskill those whose employment has been affected by COVID-19.
We will continue to pay grant funded providers their scheduled monthly profiled payments for the remainder of the 2019/20 funding year and funding allocations for 2020/21 have been confirmed. Payments will be made in line with the national profile.
We have also invested £100 million to develop a National Retraining Scheme to support working adults prepare for future changes to the economy and to help them retrain into better jobs, and have committed £2.5 billion for a National Skills Fund over the course of this Parliament, which will support people to learn new skills and prepare for the economy of the future.
We are introducing new T levels from this September – high quality, practical courses designed by employers that will provide a credible alternative to A levels and prepare students for skilled work or further study.
We are currently reforming and simplifying the qualifications system so that learners can easily find high-quality qualifications that give them the skills they need. With our proposals, any qualification, including existing ones, can be approved if they provide learners with the knowledge, skills and behaviours that employers need.
We have also been working across government to build a package of support measures to boost skills among those who will be hardest hit by the labour market impacts of COVID-19. On 8 July my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced measures across a range of targeted work-based training offers to support people to build the skills they need to get into work. This amounts to investment of £1.6 billion in employment support schemes which will substantially expand existing provision. This includes:
Yes3 people think so
No1 person thinks not
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