It was five years ago this month when the Richard Review of apprenticeships recommended the reforms that led to the setting up of new employer-designed standards and the establishment of the Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA).

The IfA has published its first annual report and accounts for the 2017-18 financial year, which reveals information about what it has spent, how much it pays its staff and how quickly it is approving apprenticeship standards.

Five takeaways from Institute for Apprenticehips’ report 

1. In its first year, the institute said it worked with more than 2,500 businesses to design new apprenticeship standards with 100 industry representatives sitting across its 15 sector-specific route panels.
2. By March 2018, six out of 10 apprenticeship starts were still on the old frameworks, rather than the new employer-designed standards. However, some progress is at least being made: 97 per cent of apprenticeship starts were on the old frameworks just a year before.
3. The IfA aims to have 400 apprenticeship standards approved by the end of the 2018-19 financial year. By 2020 it hopes this figure will be closer to 500, with 80 per cent of new starts being approved within eight months. The institute has faced criticism for the slow pace with which apprenticeship standards were being approved, with skills minister Anne Milton calling for them to “really speed up” the process last November. The IfA then launched its “faster and better” initiative to speed things up.
4. The report shows that the institute employs 89 full-time, permanent members of staff. Of these, 54 are women and 35 are men.
5. The IfA had a net expenditure of £8.4 million in its first year of operating. Some 71 per cent of this expenditure was on staff costs, with the median salary being £48,600. The report lists the salary of the highest paid director as being £142,500. Current chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan, who started in November 2017, earned between £55,000 and £60,000 during the accounting period.