Whitehall has been urged to scrap its new apprenticeship target for the public sector, a new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) economic think-tank found.

The report found that to increase the number of apprenticeships in every public sector organisation with at least 250 employees would mean at least one in five new hires would have to be an apprentice.

It said this ‘blanket policy' was not an effective way to improve skills in the public sector, and could actually result in costly training and inefficient ways of working.

The analysis also claimed that the Government had failed to make a convincing case for such a large and rapid expansion in the number of apprenticeships. 

It warned the target of 600,000 new apprenticeships a year in this parliament risked ‘increasing quantity at the expense of quality'.

Jonathan Cribb, an author of the report, said: ‘With the subsidies for apprentices' training costs at 90% or 100%, employers are encouraged to take on more apprentices, but this also provides them with little or no incentive to choose a training provider with a lower price.

‘In addition, the specific targets for most public sector employers in England to employ apprentices could lead to costly, and potentially damaging, re-organisations, and should be dropped.'