What is an Apprenticeship?
The term ‘apprenticeship’ is a job with an accompanying skills development programme.
The job must have a productive purpose and should provide the apprentice with the opportunity to gain knowledge, skills and behaviours needed to achieve the apprenticeship, including the end-point assessment (if necessary) which the employee undertakes as part of their skills development requirements for their job role. In simple terms an apprenticeship is a genuine job with training.
The term ‘apprentice’ refers to the employee who is undertaking the apprenticeship training and assessment, which is funded via the apprenticeship levy.
Apprenticeships can be applied to both new recruits and existing staff in roles from entry level up to and including degree level, regardless of age.
They can be undertaken for:
• Building the talent pipeline - either for new recruitment or to develop internal talent to fill critical skills gaps
• Developing existing staff - offering a route for anyone who needs to develop new skills due to changes in job roles or job requirements
For existing staff, the School must have identified a need for the employee to acquire new skills. Examples of this could include recent recruits who do not have the full qualifications needed for the role, job changes as a result of restructures, staff redeployment into new roles, job redesign for other reasons, statutory or regulatory changes requiring new skills, or other service changes.
Offering an apprenticeship is a productive and effective way for Schools to grow their own talent (including targeting roles that are typically hard to fill) to build their future workforce with motivated, skilled and qualified staff.
