Training providers in England are being asked to deliver more types of funded provision, to more types of learners, under more types of funding models, than at any point in the history of the apprenticeship system – while the rules governing all of it are still being written.
This article sets out what that means for the technology decisions providers make, why flexibility and configurability matter more than any feature list, and what a technology partner that genuinely understands the sector looks like in practice. Aptem, which supports over 100,000 learners across nearly 200 training providers, has been tracking this shift closely.
Managing multiple Growth and Skills Levy programme types at once
The Growth and Skills Levy represents the most significant reshaping of skills funding in England since the original Apprenticeship Levy launched in 2017. The creation of Skills England, the transfer of apprenticeships policy to the Department for Work and Pensions, reformed assessment plans, revised co-investment rates, changes to which standards attract funding – these are not incremental adjustments to a stable system. They represent a structural shift in how workforce skills are funded, governed, and delivered.
And it is not finished. Skills England’s own Annual Skills Report, published in June 2026, identifies five key challenges facing the skills system and calls for a more flexible, employer-led and evidence-driven approach. Phil Smith, Chair of Skills England, acknowledged in the Assessment of priority skills to 2030 that “there is huge uncertainty at the moment, in how the economy may evolve” and that “this uncertainty makes future planning more important, not less.” The House of Commons Library’s current skills policy briefing notes that the full range of Growth and Skills Levy-eligible provision is still being determined. And that’s before we add to the mix a change of Prime Minister, and the policy uncertainty that comes with it.
All of this is playing out against a constrained funding backdrop. The apprenticeship budget overspent for the first time in 2024-25, requiring a £345 million government injection. The budget rises to £3.3 billion for 2026-27, but alongside a co-investment rate increase from 5% to 25%, a levy expiry window cut from 24 to 12 months, and the removal of the 10% top-up to employer accounts. More provision is expected, with tighter financial controls.
Ministerial objectives for the Growth and Skills Levy
In June 2026, the Skills Minister set out four objectives for the Growth and Skills Levy:
- 50,000 more young people starting an apprenticeship by March 2029.
- Further improvements in the quality of apprenticeship training provision, increasing the achievement rate to over 70%.
- Continue to introduce greater flexibility to meet employers’ skills needs, support the Industrial Strategy and power economic growth.
- Simplify the system, target our funding and make it easier for employers, ensuring that our budget is prioritised towards key government objectives.
When deciding which products to fund, the government will prioritise those that support young people – particularly apprenticeships with a high proportion of starts for under-25s – and those that contribute to growth and the priority skills identified by Skills England across ten critical sectors, in line with the Industrial Strategy.
Within this context, providers may be running full apprenticeships alongside foundation apprenticeships and apprenticeship units – but it is worth being clear about where each stands.
Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships remain the established core. The compliance requirements are well-understood: ILR data maintained throughout, off-the-job training evidence, knowledge, skills, and behaviours (KSBs) mapped to the standard, structured tripartite reviews, and apprenticeship assessment now integrated throughout the programme
Foundation apprenticeships
Foundation apprenticeships exist in policy and early delivery, but uptake has been low and the sector’s experience so far involves as many questions as answers about how these programmes work in practice for employers and learners.
Apprenticeship units
Apprenticeship units are newer still, and more complex – short programmes drawn from existing standards, designed for employed adults needing targeted upskilling. The employer appetite is real, but providers are navigating significant open questions around ILR requirements, milestone payment mechanics, and DWP administrative processes that are not yet fully resolved.
The challenge is building operations – and choosing technology – that can manage all of these simultaneously, absorb the detail as it emerges, and adapt as the picture becomes clearer.
ILR and compliance in Aptem: a platform built for every funded programme type
The ILR sits at the heart of every funded programme in England. Whether a provider is delivering full apprenticeships, foundation apprenticeships, apprenticeship units, Skills Bootcamps, or Adult Skills Fund (ASF) programmes, accurate ILR data is what triggers funding, satisfies audit, and evidences compliance to Ofsted. Getting it wrong – or managing it across multiple disconnected systems – is where providers accumulate risk.
Aptem was built around this reality. ILR data is captured through a configurable onboarding workflow, pre-populates all statutory compliance documents, and is exportable in XML format for submission via the Submit Learner Data service. Electronic signatures are validated by the DfE and the large majority of funding bodies. Compliance document status is visible across the entire caseload from a single grid – not reconstructed from email trails before a deadline.
Each programme type carries its own ILR structure, and Aptem handles them simultaneously. Full apprenticeships, Skills Bootcamps, and ASF programmes each have the correct ILR token, funding mechanics, and milestone tracking built in – configured by the provider’s own team, without development work. When funding rules change, providers update their programme configuration. They do not build a new system.
That consistency matters at inspection too. Aptem’s built-in dashboards cover QAR calculations, retention and pass rates, withdrawals, and learners past planned end date – the metrics Ofsted examiners reach for first. The platform connects directly to published DfE and Ofsted data for contextualisation, so providers arrive at inspection with evidence already assembled rather than compiled.
Across more than a decade and multiple funding rule iterations, Aptem has adapted to every significant change in the skills funding landscape. For providers navigating the Growth and Skills Levy era, that track record is not a footnote – it is the point.
What the Growth and Skills Levy means for employer engagement
The purpose of funded skills training is to build workforce capability. Employers invest levy funds because they need their people to develop skills that make the business more effective.
What the Growth and Skills Levy does – in intent at least – is give employers more flexibility in how they make that investment. Apprenticeship units exist precisely because employers asked for a faster, more targeted route to upskilling existing staff than a full apprenticeship provides. The Skills England Annual Skills Report 2026 is explicit that the system needs to be more responsive to employer demand, particularly for SMEs.
For providers, this means the employer relationship has become both more central and more varied. An employer commissioning units for staff in AI or engineering has different needs and a different engagement model from one taking on foundation apprentices at 16. Managing both well – at scale, across multiple employers and programme types – requires technology that makes employer involvement straightforward rather than administratively burdensome: visibility of learner progress without manual reports, review workflows a line manager can join without specialist training, and milestone tracking built into the system rather than a spreadsheet.
Providers who get this right retain employers. Providers who make employer engagement feel like compliance administration lose them.
Why flexibility and configurability matter more than features
When a training provider chooses a platform, they are not just choosing the features in the demo. They are choosing how their team will respond the next time the funding rules change – whether a new programme type will need a new system or a configuration task, whether ILR data will be accurate because the platform generates it naturally, or because someone is reconciling records before a deadline.
These choices compound. A platform that absorbs regulatory change in year one will still be doing so in year four. One that generates workarounds in year one will have accumulated four years of them by renewal.
Programme structures, workflow steps, review types, milestone triggers, and compliance documents should all be adjustable by the provider’s own team, without development work. When an apprenticeship unit requires different terminology from a full apprenticeship, the platform should accommodate that through configuration. When assessment reform changes evidence requirements, the review structure should be updatable in the platform.
In practice: Lifetime Training, the UK’s largest apprenticeship provider, used Aptem’s configurable review functionality to replace a single monthly visit with seven purpose-built meeting types – each with its own structure and documentation – across five sectors, without a single development request.
This is a structural question about what kind of relationship a provider is entering into with their technology vendor – and whether that vendor’s architecture was designed for a fixed regulatory environment or one that keeps moving.
Providers who chose Aptem Apprentice before the Growth and Skills Levy arrived did not need to build a new system when foundation apprenticeships and apprenticeship units emerged. They reconfigure what they already have – multiple programme types, each with its own ILR structure, compliance documents, review format, and employer engagement model, managed from the same platform by the provider’s own team.
What a technology partner that understands the sector actually looks like
The skills system does not change by surprise. Funding rule updates are consulted on, ILR specification changes published in advance, assessment plan reforms communicated through Skills England and the sector bodies. A technology partner genuinely engaged with the sector knows what is coming before their customers have to ask.
Aptem’s Compliance Advisory Board meets monthly with sector experts, tracking incoming regulatory changes and feeding them into the product roadmap. 229 new features and updates were released in 2025. The platform has adapted to every significant change in the skills funding landscape across more than a decade – through multiple funding rule iterations, multiple Ofsted framework updates, and now the most significant structural reform the sector has seen.
That track record matters because the levy is not a settled destination. Skills England’s Assessment of priority skills to 2030 projects demand across priority sectors growing by 24% over the next decade, requiring up to 1.8 million additional workers. The Annual Skills Report 2026 makes clear that meeting that demand will require a more responsive, flexible training system than currently exists.
The providers who have experienced this partnership describe it clearly.
“The rules can be complex, but we know that Aptem will be there to support us; interpreting new rules in our language and relating it specifically to our business.”
Emily Bowler, MIS and Data Manager, BMS Progress
“The industry as a whole is constantly evolving. Layer that with our curriculum demands, client requirements and growth ambitions. We needed a system that is agile and a team behind it that can react quickly.”
Richard Bridge, Director of Learning Technology, Corndel
“The reason we will stay with Aptem is because they have demonstrated their ability to keep pace with our ambitions.”
Dominic Scott, CRM/LMS Officer, Bradford College
“Aptem holds the key to enrolment at our university for all apprenticeships.”
Steven Willis, CAS Operations Manager, Middlesex University
What to ask when evaluating technology for Growth and Skills Levy delivery
Most platform demos answer ‘what does this do today?’ The more important question is ‘how has this adapted when things changed, and how quickly?’
Ask whether foundation apprenticeships, apprenticeship units, and full apprenticeships can be managed in the same system with the correct ILR structure and funding mechanics for each. Ask whether workflows can be reconfigured by the provider’s own team or require vendor involvement. Ask what the vendor’s actual mechanism is for tracking regulatory change, and how customers were supported the last time a significant update arrived.
Ask, specifically, how the vendor is approaching apprenticeship units – given that ILR requirements, milestone payment structures, and DWP processes are still bedding in. A vendor working through this in real time with customers is in a different position from one waiting for the detail to settle.
The answers reveal whether a technology vendor understands the sector it is selling into, or is selling a product that happens to have an apprenticeship use case.
The Growth and Skills Levy has made skills delivery more complex and more uncertain than at any previous point, and Skills England’s own analysis makes clear this will increase. Providers who build on technology designed for today’s requirements will face that complexity with a platform already behind. Providers who choose a partner that has spent a decade proving it can move with the sector will face it from a fundamentally different position.
Aptem Apprentice is used by nearly 200 training providers across England – Corndel, Lifetime Training, Nottingham Trent University, London South Bank University, Barnsley College, Bradford College, Tyne Coast College, BMS Progress, Hawk Training, and Pareto among them – across every provider type and every funded programme type, supporting more than 130,000 learners and jobseekers every month.
If you’re delivering Adult Skills Fund programmes or Skills Bootcamps alongside Growth and Skills Levy provision, Aptem supports those too. Aptem Skills manages funded vocational training beyond apprenticeships – including ASF programmes, Skills Bootcamps, and study programmes – on the same platform, with ILR compliance, structured learning delivery, milestone tracking, and Ofsted-ready evidence built in. Providers already using Aptem Apprentice can extend to Skills Bootcamp or ASF delivery without a separate system.
To see how Aptem supports delivery across the full range of Growth and Skills Levy programmes, talk to our team – we work with providers across every delivery model and would be glad to share how organisations like yours have made it work.
