The public sector apprenticeship target was introduced in 2017. Under this, public sector bodies with 250 or more staff in England have a target to employ an average of at least 2.3% of their staff as new apprentice starts over the period of 1st April 2017 to 31st March 2021. Public sector bodies are required to submit data annually on the number of employees and apprenticeship starts they had before and following the target reporting period. They are also required to contextualise their approach to the target by providing responses of no more than 500 words to four questions via their Apprentice Service account, submitted annually to the Department for Education (DfE). Specifically, public sector bodies were asked: (1) Actions you have taken this year to meet the target, and how these compare to the actions taken in the previous year 17/18? (2) Challenges you faced this year in your efforts to meet the target, and how these compare to the challenges experienced in the previous year 17/18? (3) How you are planning to meet the target in future, and what will you continue to do or do differently to that end? (4) Have you got any other additional information you would like to add? A total of 615 responses were received and analysed out of a possible 1,299 employers estimated to be in scope of the target (a 47.3% response rate compared with 82.4% response rate in 2017/18). The number of bodies in scope increased from 820 in 2017/18 to 1,299 in 2018/19 due to the inclusion of academies. In addition, detailed reporting against the target was 'cut-off' to allow for analysis, the total number of organisations who provided submissions to contribute to the development of the official statistics on the public sector target was 845 (63%). The following briefing document provides a summary of the key findings from analysis of responses submitted by public sector bodies to understand how they have responded to the public sector apprenticeship target in 2018/19, the barriers they have faced, changes they have experienced since their 2017/18 activity, their plans for the future delivery of the target, and any wider or additional comments they wished to make. The remainder of the briefing document is structured to show: overall progress against the target; actions taken by public sector bodies in 2018/19 and key differences to 2017/18; challenges faced and key differences to 2017/18; future plans; and, a concluding summary of key messages and experiences. Views from the additional information provided are reflected throughout the document as respondents primarily used this to expand on themes previously identified in their responses to preceding questions. [This report was written with BMG Research.]