DWP have confirmed it will support proposals to expand Automatic Enrolment, enabling millions of people to save more and to start saving earlier – abolishing the Lower Earnings Limit for contributions and reducing the age for being automatically enrolled to 18 years old.

This will involve lowering the age at which eligible workers must be automatically enrolled into a pension scheme by their employers from 22 to 18 will make saving the norm for young adults and enable them to begin to save from the start of their working lives.

Read more here.

Students finance to be radically transformed from 2025 with a new, more flexible system introduced to empower adults to upskill or retrain throughout their working lives.

People across the country are set to benefit from a complete overhaul of student finance, helping them get flexible loan funding to train, retrain and upskill throughout their working lives.

The Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE) will empower more people to study in a way that works for them,
opening opportunities for those that might have never considered higher education. This could help them balance training or studies alongside other commitments such as childcare or financial commitments, which will revolutionise social mobility and plug skills gaps.

The overhaul will not only empower people to learn throughout their lives and offer greater opportunities for learning but enable workers to retrain and upskill to meet the needs of the cutting-edge industries and high-paid jobs of the future.

The Government has confirmed that from 2025, people will be able to access loans worth the equivalent of four years of post-18 education (£37,000 in today’s tuition fees) under the LLE and use them flexibly over their working lives to suit their circumstances – transforming the student finance system.

Read more here.

The NCFE boss talks about T Level problems and efforts to ensure they don’t happen again.

T Levels designed by the DfE to be the flagship technical equivalents of A-levels – are “broader, deeper, more rigorous, more challenging, more aligned to employers’ needs,” than qualifications that have gone before and are “significantly harder”.

Contract values for all of NCFE’s T Levels, including the new ones for this year, total nearly £35 million, with the health, science and healthcare science T Levels alone accounting for more than £10 million.

Read more here.

In the UK, 15.66 million women aged 16 and over were in employment in October to December 2022,
according to the ONS UK labour market bulletin. This means that 108,000 more women were employed
than in the year before.

The female employment rate was 72.3%, down from a record high of 72.7% in December 2019 to February
2020. The male employment rate was 79.0%.

There were 9.74 million women working full-time, while 5.92 million were working part-time. Most part-time
employment was by women (38%), compared with 14% of men.

In the UK, the sectors with the most women in employment are health and social work (accounting for 21%
of all jobs held by women as of September 2022), the wholesale and retail trade (13%) and education
(12%). In the health and social work sector, 77% of jobs are held by women, and in education it is 70%.
Median weekly pay for female full-time employees was £584 in April 2022, according to data from the ONS
Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. This compared with £683 for male full-time employees.

Read more here

The government has confirmed it is developing a teaching apprenticeship route for non-graduates

Trainees taking up the route would gain both a degree and qualified teacher status, under plans being
drawn up by officials.

Department of Education are now working with the sector and with the Institute for Apprenticeships and
Technical Education to develop a new degree and QTS-awarding apprenticeship in teaching.

 

Read more here.

Our Summary:

• Inflation seems to have peaked and there have been positive economic developments ahead of the Spring Budget.
• Economic data during February has been better than expected, leading to greater optimism over the economic outlook for 2023.
• Inflation seems to have already peaked with inflation expected to fall during 2023.

Read more here.

The National Minimum Wage (NMW) applies to most workers and sets minimum hourly rates of pay.

The rates are provided in regulations made by the Secretary for State with parliamentary approval, based on the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission (LPC).

NMW rates vary by age group. NMW rates vary by age group. From April 2022 the minimum wage is:

£9.50 per hour for adults aged 23 and over (this is the “National Living Wage” rate)

£9.18 for 21–22-year-olds,

£6.83 for 18–20-year-olds,

£4.81 for under 18s,

£4.81 for apprentices aged under 19 or in their first year of an apprenticeship.

From April 2023 the minimum wage will be:

£10.42 per hour for adults aged 23+

£10.18 for 21–22-year-olds,

£7.49 for 18–20-year-olds,

£5.28 for under 18s,

£5.28 for apprentices

The Low Pay Commission estimates that there were around 1.6 million workers paid at or below the minimum wage in April 2022, around 5% of all UK workers. This compares to 1.5 million jobs paid at or below the NMW in 2015, before the introduction of the National Living Wage.

Read more here.

The report outlines the NHS’s priorities for workforce planning, vacancies, and turnover, it talks about safe staffing levels and domestic recruitment, education, and training.

Several issues have been highlighted around the factors affecting recruitment and retention within the NHS:

• Work-related stress, sickness, and burnout.
• Bullying, harassment, and discrimination at work; and the Government’s 2022/23 pay offer, which was widely rejected by healthcare worker unions, who are now taking industrial action.
• Government Policy.

Read more here.

Courses are funded by the government, teaching skills like chainsaw maintenance, coppicing, woodland management, and marketing and selling timber are now available.

The Forestry Training Fund is for people considering a change of career or those who are seeking to build and diversify their skills in forestry. The UK forestry and primary wood processing sectors support 32,000 jobs and contribute £2 billion to the economy every year, whilst secondary wood processing businesses support a further 60,000 jobs.

The government has committed to increasing tree-planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares a year by the end of the Parliament to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The short, practical training courses will be paid for by £700,000 allocation from the £750m Nature for Climate Fund and will help grow the forestry sector so that we have enough people with the right skills to plan, plant and manage new woodlands. 100% funding for eligible courses and expect grants to be in the range of £150-£3,000. Funding will be paid directly to the training provider. Applications for funding to cover training courses can be made multiple times as long as it can be demonstrated that individual courses are developing a person’s career.

Building upon a successful intake of apprentices this year, the Forestry Commission has announced it will reopen its Woodland Officer programme in 2023, the first-of-its-kind apprenticeship initiative to foster a growing, highly skilled, and diverse workforce within the forestry sector.

The Development Woodland Officer programme offers a three-year, paid development opportunity for passionate individuals from all backgrounds looking to kickstart their careers in forestry. It aims to grow and upskill the forestry sector workforce and is open to school leavers, graduates or anyone looking for a change in career direction. The programme supports jobs and opportunities in rural communities and helps increase capacity to meet tree planting and forest management needs to deliver the Government’s tree planting and woodland creation ambitions over the coming years.

Following in the footsteps of the original cohort, Development Woodland Officers will benefit from academic studies in forestry management at the University of Cumbria, practical experience in Forestry Commission area teams across England, and nine months of wider sector placements to further build their skills and experience, enhancing future employment prospects.

Upon completion of the programme, successful graduates will earn a Professional Forester Apprenticeship (equivalent to Level 6), a BSc (Hons) Professional Forester and the potential to gain Chartered Forester status with the Institute of Chartered Foresters. Forestry Commission are also working with other employers in the sector to open more opportunities for apprentices to join this programme.

Read more here.