Apprenticeship funding: price, band, service and evidence

Each apprenticeship has a price you agree with the employer.

Every apprenticeship standard sits in a funding band with a maximum. Government funding only goes up to that maximum. Anything above it, the employer pays themselves.

Part of the price is paid monthly while the apprentice is on programme, and part is held back until they complete. That is why late completion recording has a direct cash effect rather than only a performance one.

Where the employer does not have levy funds, the cost is shared through co-investment on the proportions set out in the rules for the year.

The negotiated price is recorded in the apprenticeship financial record on the ILR and in the apprenticeship service. Earnings are calculated from the price up to the band maximum, split between on-programme instalments and the completion element.

Provision runs under ILR funding model 36. The band maximum that applies is the one in force for the standard when the apprenticeship started.

Apprenticeship funding depends on your ILR and the employer's account in the apprenticeship service telling the same story.

If they disagree, the apprenticeship does not pay, even if your ILR is perfect.

The usual causes are simple: the ULN, the start date, the standard or the price differs by a character or a day. A single mismatch stops the money.

This is not a validation problem and it will not appear in a validation report. It appears as an apprentice who exists, looks correct, and earns nothing.

Reconcile apprentices on the ILR against apprentices in the apprenticeship service monthly, to zero differences, on ULN, standard, start date and price.

Check at the point of start that the apprenticeship has been added and approved in the service before delivery begins, rather than discovering it at the first funding report.

Apprentices pause, change employer, change standard and leave. Each of those is recorded differently and each has a different funding effect.

The most consequential distinction is between a break in learning, where the apprentice is coming back, and a withdrawal, where they are not.

A break pauses earnings and preserves the aim. A withdrawal ends earnings and closes the aim into the achievement rate as a non-achievement.

The test is the genuine intention at the time, evidenced. A break that has run far beyond any realistic expectation of return has become a withdrawal that has not been recorded, and that pattern is well known to auditors.

Record a break as a temporary withdrawal with the appropriate status and dates, and record the restart when the apprentice returns so the aim is treated as a continuation rather than a new start.

Review every open break monthly: confirm the expected return date or convert it. The correction is always cheaper now than at year end.

An apprentice has to spend a required amount of their paid working time on training that is not their normal day-to-day job.

It has to be planned and recorded, and the records are a standard audit test.

The requirement is about the training being genuine, within working hours, and away from routine duties. Recording it after the fact, or reconstructing it, is the common failure.

The current minimum and how it is calculated are set out in the funding rules for the funding year and have changed over time, so check the current position.

Maintain a training plan and a contemporaneous record of delivery against it. Reconcile the two periodically rather than at audit.

Off-the-job records are tested alongside the apprenticeship agreement, the commitment statement and the evidence of employment.