An apprenticeship is a paid job which combines employment and training and is available to anyone entitled to work in the UK. The apprentice gets a nationally-recognised qualification on completion.

Apprenticeships are a unique way to ‘grow your own’; they combine on-the-job training in an organisation with off-the-job learning and provide employers with an effective way of growing their skills base. The apprentice’s learning takes place in context and provides a real understanding of the working world, combining practical skills with theoretical knowledge. Apprenticeships can therefore offer a career route into the organisation and an invaluable opportunity to develop the expertise the business needs now and in the future.

Apprenticeships have traditionally provided structured routes into skilled work for young people entering the labour market. Recent government policy changes have brought a new focus on apprenticeships as a tool to increase national productivity, social mobility and improve the wage and employment prospects of individuals. 

There are apprenticeships available to cover a huge range of occupations and sectors, including creative and digital media, public relations, accounting, agriculture, engineering, human resources and cyber security.

Hiring apprentices brings a number of benefits to employers:

• 80% of employers have maintained or improved future skills in the business.
• 70% of employers have seen improvements in the goods and services they offer.
• 66% of employers have experienced improved staff morale.

A critical challenge for the UK economy is its stagnant productivity growth, which holds down wages and living standards. Apprenticeships can help on that front too. According to Centre for Economics and Business research on the economic impact of apprenticeships, there is a net gain to the employer while apprentices train, and a higher output once employed. While training, apprentices are estimated to have contributed to a positive net gain of on average £1,670 per apprentice in England in 2013/14. That amounts to a total annual benefit of £1.4bn across the estimated number of apprentices. In the longer term, it’s estimated that each apprenticeship created is worth an estimated £38,000 to the economy.

Apprenticeships are available to anyone aged over the age of 16, not in full-time education, and eligible to work in the UK. An apprentice is an employee, so all apprentices receive a wage. The Apprenticeship National Minimum Wage is set by the Low Pay Commission and revised on an annual basis. If an apprentice is aged 19 or over and has completed the first year of their apprenticeship, they are entitled to the National Minimum Wage for their age group. See the current National Minimum Wage rates.

An apprentice should be told about their rights as an employee – what they are entitled to expect and what their obligations are to their employer and colleagues. This is mandatory in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Training is a combination of on the job and off the job. The training provided depends on the sector and skill levels of the apprentice. There's considerable variation across the devolved nations of the UK but they all comprise core elements: a competence-based element, a knowledge-based element, and transferable or functional skills.

• Transferable skills – These skills are variously referred to as functional/key skills, core skills, or essential skills, but the all these terms describe a core set of skills that people need in today’s workplaces and include English, maths and information and communications technology (ICT) using practical applications.

• Competence - The competence (technical skills) aspects of the apprenticeship are completed in the workplace.

• Knowledge - The knowledge part of the apprenticeship covers the technical knowledge and theory that is relevant to the practical skills an apprentice will develop in their job role.

Key lessons on how to design and run high-quality apprenticeship programmes which support business and workforce strategies include:

• Apprenticeships need to be embedded in a workforce planning approach, with clear business benefits as part of a long-term strategy on workforce growth and skills development.
  
  
• A prerequisite for a successful apprenticeship programme is clarity about the role that apprentices play in the organisation, job design which ensures on- and off-the-job learning and development, and a shared understanding of how they will be supported and by whom.
  
  
• Winning the support of the existing workforce, senior management, line managers and trade unions is crucial. Line managers in particular need the right tools to support the apprentice journey.
  
  
• The training apprentices receive on and off the job needs to be high quality and tailored to both the apprentice's and employer's needs. To achieve this, the relationship with the training provider needs to be managed carefully.
  
  
• Recruiting apprentices may differ from the usual recruitment procedure, especially when the candidate is particularly young (aged 16-18) and has no prior work experience. Alternative recruitment methods and techniques need to be considered.
  
  
• It's important to be aware of the legal framework: Apprentices are covered by a contract of employment and have similar rights to other employees; however, they have greater protection under the law than most employees.
  
  
• To ensure success, the apprentice needs to be placed at the heart of the apprenticeship programme and employers must provide ongoing support, pastoral care and mentoring. Good management of apprentices is vital to ensure they adapt to the workplace and continue to grow with the business.
  
  
• Employers need to make sure they provide fair access to their apprenticeship schemes and widen the talent pool from which they recruit in terms of gender, ethnicity and diversity.

Some differences in terms of the level of funding provided and training required exist in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but the core features of the apprenticeship model remain the same across the four UK nations. Our report Devolution and evolution in UK skills policy provides a detailed account of the differences between the four nations.

Since April 2017, an apprenticeship levy applies to all UK employers with an annual wage bill of £3 million or more, whether or not they offer apprenticeships themselves. Our podcast explored the impact of the levy on organisations and what it could mean for employers of all sizes. This infographic gives a visual overview.

Our report Making apprenticeships future-fit raised concerns that the levy, and other funding reforms, has led employers to increasingly concentrate their investment on existing employees, who are often already highly experienced and qualified, meaning that younger people lose out.

In England, employers can access and manage their funds through an online apprenticeship service run by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The funds can only be used toward the cost of apprenticeship training and end-point assessments. Levy paying employers who do not expect to use all their available funds can transfer up to 25% to other employers.

Employers who are not liable for levy payments are required to co-invest. The government contributes 95% of the cost of training, with employers paying the remaining 5%. Levy paying employers who utilise all of the funds in their online accounts also switch to the co-investment model.

UK apprenticeships are a devolved matter. This means levy monies paid by employers in the devolved regions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are allocated to the relevant devolved authority and deployed according to their specific strategy/process

Contacts

National Apprenticeship Service Helpdesk Telephone: 0800 015 0400 

Apprenticeships in England 

Apprenticeships in Wales

Apprenticeships in Scotland

Apprenticeships in Northern Ireland

Education & Skills Funding Agency

Employers' schemes

Apprenticeships (England)

Careers Wales

Apprenticeships (Skills Development Scotland)

Apprenticeships (NI Business Info)

Books and reports

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. (2013) The future of apprenticeships in England: implementation plan. London: BIS.

CIPD. (2014) The match factor: good practice in apprenticeship recruitment. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 

CIPD. (2018) Early impact of the apprenticeship levy. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 

Crowley, L. and Zemanik, M. (2023) Devolution and evolution in UK skills policy: finding common ground across the four nations. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 

Journal articles

Campbell, J. and Keen, L. (2020) The importance of apprenticeships to the UK’s long-term recovery. People Management (online). 27 July.

Cavaglia, C., McNally, S. and Ventura, G. (2020) Do apprenticeships pay? Evidence for England. Oxford Bulletin for Economics and Statistics. Vol 82, No 5, October. pp. 1094-1134. 

Crowley, L. (2019) The apprenticeship levy two years on. CIPD Voice. Issue 18, 3 May.

Crowley, L. (2020) The role of apprenticeships in workforce development: is a fundamental rethink required? CIPD Voice. Issue 22, 3 Feb.

Lewis, G. (2023) Signify’s Bren Lumsden: ‘Our apprenticeships are helping us to address gender imbalance’. People Management (online). 15 May.

Martin. L. (2022) How apprenticeships can break down societal barriers to learning. People Management (online). 16 August.

Rowsell, J. and Jackson, I. (2023) Apprenticeships starts drop 31% since the introduction of levy, CIPD report reveals. People Management (online). 31 October. 

Sobrevilla, A., Mackay, Z. and Walczak, M. (2023) Productivity and apprenticeship employment intensity in Scotland: a longitudinal study at the enterprise level. International Journal of Population Data Science. Vol 8, No 2. 

Wheeler, J. (2023) Navigating the UK apprenticeship levy through alternative workplace learning methods. People Management (online). 30 June.

CIPD members can use our online journals to find articles from over 300 journal titles relevant to HR.

Members and People Management subscribers can see articles on the People Management website.