Can I make a boring and long-winded subject interesting?
I think the best way to do this is to keep this brief so that you don’t all fall asleep. Apprenticeship funding has undergone some changes over the years. However, there are two primary routes for funding apprenticeships:
- The Apprenticeship Levy (bigger businesses);
- The Co-Investment scheme (smaller businesses).
In this article, we’ll delve into these funding routes in order to help you understand how funding apprenticeships works in 2023. Let’s see if I can get this done in under 350 words!
Bigger businesses, The Apprenticeship Levy
The Basics
The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in 2017 as a means of financing apprenticeships. It applies to larger employers with an annual wage bill of £3 million or more. if this applies to your organisation, you’ll be required to contribute 0.5% of your payroll bill annually. The funds you contribute are channelled into the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) account, which employers can then use to pay for apprenticeship training and assessment. However, there is a caveat, any money you don’t spend within 24 months will be removed from your account and put into the general Apprenticeship fund. So it’s important that you spend some or all of that money.
Why should you spend your Levy contribution?
Ultimately, you should utilise your levy contribution to invest in the growth, development, and future success of your workforce and business. But also, putting your employees on valuable training will increase morale, retention, and positive experience for them.
Smaller businesses, Co-Investment scheme
The Basics:
The Co-Investment scheme is designed to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that don’t meet the criteria for the Apprenticeship Levy, ie, pay less than a £3mil wage bill. As an employer, you can share the costs of apprenticeship training with the government through co-investment. As opposed to paying the entire cost, you are simply required to pay 5% of the apprenticeship value and the government covers the remaining 95%. Now, in terms of marketing apprenticeships, that means you’d be getting an £11,000 Multi-Channel Marketer course for just £550. Not too shabby…
Why would you utilise Co-Investment?
Well, you don’t have to, but I’m not sure what benefit paying the full price for an apprenticeship course would be over letting the government pay 95%. However, the real reason is the long list of benefits you’ll get from using it:
- Free recruitment process means you save money on recruitment costs;
- 95% funding from the government means you save HUGE amounts of cash on training;
- An apprenticeship training provider to partner with means you’re supported along the way;
- And the list goes on.
Quick maths
We offer a couple of different apprenticeship courses here at The Marketing Trainer and here is the breakdown of costs to you as a Co-Investment employer for each:
- Multi-Channel Marketer = £11,000 – 95% = £550 contribution
- Market Research Executive = £8,000 – 95% = £400 contribution
- Marketing Executive = £6,000 – 95% = £300 contribution
Last bit, incentives
As an employer, you could get an additional £1,000 for taking on an apprentice who is either:
- aged 16 to 18 years old, or
- aged 19 to 25 years old and has an education, health and care (EHC) plan or has been in the care of their local authority.
There we go, hopefully, that wasn’t too painful. Hopefully, that’s answered any possible questions. However, if you still have any queries, please feel free to contact us via this website or by emailing us at info@themarketingtrainer.co.uk.
