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Whether you have just enrolled your first apprentice or you are refreshing an established programme, this handbook walks you through the moving parts of an NCE apprenticeship and the role your organisation plays in making it a success.
An apprenticeship is a real job with a structured training and assessment programme wrapped around it. The apprentice earns a wage while they build the knowledge, skills and behaviours set out in a national apprenticeship standard, and they leave with a recognised qualification and demonstrable occupational competence.
For education employers, that combination is powerful. You develop the person doing the job, you shape practice around your own setting, and you make measured use of the apprenticeship levy or co-investment funding available to you.
NCE apprenticeships are work-based and blended. Formal off-the-job training, coaching sessions, workshops and online learning sit alongside real work in the classroom, office or community setting. Your apprentice will always have a named tutor and a clear learning plan for their programme.
You and your apprentice decide, with your Learning Experience Manager, how the off-the-job hours are delivered. It might be a set weekly block, a monthly workshop, INSET days, twilight sessions or a mix. The requirement is that the training is planned, protected and directly relevant to the standard.
Since August 2025, every apprenticeship standard publishes a fixed minimum number of off-the-job training hours. Providers no longer calculate a percentage of contracted hours. The training must take place within paid working time, must teach new knowledge, skills or behaviours linked to the standard, and must be evidenced. Progress reviews and day-to-day duties do not count. English and maths training is funded and tracked separately.
Every apprenticeship finishes with an assessment that confirms the apprentice can do the job to the national standard. The traditional end-point assessment model still exists, but reforms introduced in 2025 also allow parts of the assessment to happen during the programme where the standard permits it. Assessments are always carried out by an approved, independent organisation, and the outcome is what earns the apprentice their qualification.
The assessment organisation is deliberately independent. They set the assessment plan, appoint qualified assessors and grade the apprentice against the national standard. NCE will guide you and your apprentice through the process, but the judgement is theirs.
Every employer works with a Learning Experience Manager who acts as their operational point of contact, backed by a specialist teaching team of experienced school leaders and an operations team who handle enrolments, Apprenticeship Service queries and contracts. You will always know who to call.
As the employer, you hold the primary duty of care for your apprentice while they are at work. NCE holds a parallel duty for their welfare on programme. If an apprentice discloses anything that suggests they are at risk, take it seriously, avoid promising confidentiality, record what was said in their words and contact your NCE Designated Safeguarding Lead as soon as possible. The same expectations apply to Prevent Duty concerns and to modelling British values in the workplace.
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