Revealed: The £1billion apprenticeship rip-off

That's how much of your tax money has been spent on sending top executives on top-up courses instead of training young apprentices in a scandal that keeps on growing

More than £1bn of taxpayers’ money has been used to fund thousands of courses for top executives that are equivalent to a master’s degree but badged as apprenticeships, an investigation by The Independent can reveal. More than 55,000 executives from hundreds of companies have received 100 per cent funding to take postgraduate apprenticeship standard courses. The £1bn figure for these so-called level 7 courses has been extracted from government data by education think tank EDSK and reveals that the scale of young people losing out as firms use the apprenticeship levy to bankroll training for top executives is more than three times higher than previously feared. Last week The Independent exposed how £300m of levy funding has been used to fund 21,000 senior leader apprenticeships in the five years to August 2022. Of this, £100m of levy funds was used to subsidise individuals getting MBAs.