Between the start of 2025 and June the government will hold a Spending Review, which will establish departmental spending budgets until 2028/2029.

With the OBR projecting spending cuts outside a handful of protected areas, settlements will be extremely tight, forcing Ministers to make difficult trade-offs about what to prioritise.

To get a sense of the public’s priorities for education spending, we asked a representative sample of 2000 UK adults what they wanted to see from the Spending Review. Here’s what we learned:

Increasing funding for apprenticeships is a top priority for almost all groups 

When asked to prioritise from a range of potential education spending priorities, funding for apprenticeships came well out ahead, with 48% of the public saying this should be in the top three. 

This support was strikingly consistent, with apprenticeships the most popular choice for people of every social grade (or class), region, political party and almost every age group.

It is also consistent with previous polling from Public First on the views about education spending, which finds strong support for apprenticeships across demographic groups. 

Parents also think funding for apprenticeships should be a top priority, despite narrowly preferring university for their own children 

When asked to choose, parents of children under 18 would narrowly prefer for their own child to go to university after school (44%), rather than take an apprenticeship (40%). 

This overall figure does hide some variation, as parents without a degree themselves and those outside AB social grades are more likely to prefer apprenticeships than university.  

But it is striking that funding for apprenticeship is the top education spending priority for parents of those under 18 – even though many of their children will currently be in other education settings. 

46% selected this as a top three spending priority, well above the proportion choosing funding for childcare and early years (35%), secondary schools (33%) and primary schools (27%). And despite marginally preferring them as a destination, this group are less likely to believe universities need more funding, with only 31% selecting this as a priority.  

The public are aware of challenges in the apprenticeship system 

We also used our poll to ask about opportunities available through apprenticeships for young people. Our findings suggest the public are more aware of challenges in the apprenticeship system than might be assumed.

Overall, 44% thought it would be difficult for young people to find apprenticeships in their region of the country – in line with the steep fall in the number of young people taking apprenticeships since 2016.

London is the only region where respondents were more likely to say young people found it easy rather than difficult to access an apprenticeship, again reflecting how apprenticeship starts amongst young people have fallen fastest in regions outside the capital. 

Respondents in the AB social grade were also the only group to say it would be easy rather than difficult to access an apprenticeship, perhaps reflecting the way these have become an increasingly desirable option for young people from more affluent backgrounds, whilst the number of young people from poorer areas taking apprenticeships has declined.

Turning support into action

The public’s support for better apprenticeships and technical education is not a new finding; it comes through consistently in Public First’s polling and conversations with the public, as well as other research. 

But despite pledges to increase uptake and successful reforms to improve quality, governments over the last decade have struggled to meet the public’s level of ambition for apprenticeships, especially for young people.

Fixing the system does not just require more funding, though this is fundamentally important, especially at a time when changes to the Growth and Skills Levy will put more pressure on the apprenticeship budget overall. 

Prioritising apprenticeships at the Spending Review would be both smart policy and politics from the new administration. 

Polling Tables

Public First surveyed 2,011 adults in the UK from 17th – 21st January 2025 as part of our monthly omnibus poll. All results are weighted using Iterative Proportional Fitting, or ‘Raking’. The results are weighted by interlocking age & gender, region and social grade to Nationally Representative Proportions. Public First is a member of the BPC and abides by its rules. For more information please contact the Public First polling team: polling@publicfirst.co.uk

Download Polling Tables