Written questions by Mullane.

If her Department will take steps to allow colleges to carry out their own end point assessments for apprenticeships.

In February 2025 the department announced improvements to apprenticeship assessment and published a new set of assessment principles. This will make assessment simpler for employers, providers and apprentices and remove unnecessary duplication.End-point assessment organisations (EPAOs) will be able to delegate assessment to the apprenticeship training provider, including colleges, where appropriate, in line with the revised assessment plan. EPAOs will continue to shape the assessment and ensure the validity of outcomes.These changes will make the system more efficient and improve the experience for employers and apprentices, while retaining rigour and quality, and ensuring consistency in outcomes. This will ensure employers can be confident that apprentices have met the standards employers require.Existing assessment plans will be rewritten on a standard-by-standard basis to reflect these changes. The department is working closely with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to develop and implement these revisions from April 2025. Further detail, including which assessment plans will be revised and by when, will be outlined in due course.

If her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of re-evaluating the existing capital funding scheme for Further Education.

Ensuring schools and colleges have the resources and buildings they need is a key part of this government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every young person the best start in life. The government is investing £6.7 billion of capital funding for education in the 2025/26 financial year, a 19% real-terms increase from the 2024/25 financial year, including £950 million in skills. The department currently provides capital funding for further education (FE) through a wide range of programmes.In the Spring Statement 2025, £625 million of funding was announced to support construction skills training. The funding includes capital investment through the establishment of Technical Excellence Colleges and the creation of an employer match funding pot worth £80 million.On 1 April 2025, the department provided £302 million in new funding to FE colleges to support them to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estates. The new FE college condition allocation will help address the maintenance backlog and ensure a great environment for learning. Every FE college group will receive a share of this funding and will have the discretion to decide how funding is spent towards condition priorities for their estate.The department keeps all FE capital funding programmes under continuous review and any future capital investment will be subject to the spending review, which is due to conclude in summer 2025.