Ministers have thrown their weight behind apprenticeships today setting out how more than 21,000 apprenticeship places in frontline public services will be delivered - as the Cabinet meets in Southampton.

Marking the start of National Apprenticeships Week, Skills Secretary and Southampton MP John Denham and Children's Secretary Ed Balls will reveal how thousands of apprenticeship places are to be created in hospitals, schools, colleges and town halls across the country in 2009-10.

They also announced that it would become a requirement for all construction firms and local authorities to take on apprentices in the Building Schools for the Future programme - creating up to an extra 1,000 apprenticeship places. The unprecedented project is rebuilding or refurbishing the entire secondary school estate in England. This builds on the requirement already in place for further education building works programme Building Colleges for the Future.

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Ministers want the Government's commitment to drive up the number of public sector apprenticeships to lay down the marker to the wider economy of the need to create a new generation of skilled workers. Currently the public sector employs 20% of the national workforce but offers fewer than one in ten apprenticeships.

The places will deliver on the Government's pledge earlier this year to create 35,000 additional apprenticeship places. As part of the delivery on that pledge, they today set out their plans to drive up numbers in the public sector with an increase of 21,000 from April.

Today's announcements builds on the transformation in apprenticeships over the last ten years - from just 65,000 in 1997 to a quarter of million this coming year. Over 130,000 employers now offer apprenticeships across 80 industry sectors.

It also builds further step towards the long-term ambition that one in five young people will do an apprenticeship by 2020 with 250,000 adults starting one.

(JM/BMcC)