Deliver an apprenticeship 

When you take on an apprentice, you'll need to have people on your team who are able to help train, monitor and support your apprentices. They'll also need to be a bridge between you and a college or a training provider. Employers in England can choose to be employer providers, which means they deliver all of the training not just the on-the-job support. If you're considering being an employer provider, why not look through some of our recorded webinars that cover this or check to see if we have a training course that can support you?

If you want to work with a college or training provider, you must make sure they’re approved for delivery and can access funding. We’ve helped multinationals, public sector and local authority organisations set up, manage and embed their apprenticeship programme and you can talk to our team about our employer support and if we can help you.

If you're wondering how to take on an apprentice, you should talk to your local further education college or look up a private training provider – you can search for centres that already work with City & Guilds. They can help train your apprentice and help you understand the funding and process involved. If you’re in England and are using apprenticeship standards, you can only use organisations that are on the Government’s register of apprenticeship training providers for the apprenticeship you want to deliver. Taking on apprentices can be a great way to boost or upskill your workforce.

And remember that in the new apprenticeship standards in England, it’s always the employer’s choice of who your on-programme resources come from and the EPA organisation used. If you’re in England and have a UK tax bill of less than £3million you’ll pay for part of your apprenticeships and the Government will pay the remainder.

If you’re already delivering City & Guilds apprenticeships remember that our Technical Advisors and Industry Managers are here to help our customers. We run frequent regional networking meetings across England and Wales. And if you’re in England transitioning to the new apprenticeship standards you can try our specialist webinars on apprenticeship standards.

Remember, an employer’s success is your success and therefore how you engage with employers and add value to your offer, is vitally important.

If you’re delivering apprenticeship standards and not sure how to choose an apprenticeship organisation, our simple guide can help. If you’re a large company, local authority or public sector body and want more support, then send an enquiry to our Employer Services Team who can help with setting up an apprenticeship programme and a whole host of other upskilling opportunities.

We believe strongly that we have the expertise and experience to help deliver apprenticeships. Why?

• Wide-ranging sector and course offer. We can help you scale up your apprenticeship programme, help successful apprentices progress and provide a range of complementary regulated qualifications to underpin your programme.
• Supportive payment structure. If you’re delivering the new standards, our EPA charging points are linked to funding payments meaning you receive nearly all your funding by the time you pay for the assessment
• Tried and tested learning resources. Including e-learning, print and online resources often developed with leading industry bodies. Learn more about resources to support apprentice training
• Extensive assessment experience. Over 30 years’ experience in summative assessments and working in training and qualifications since 1878.
• Expert support  If you’re choosing us for your EPA organisation, our dedicated team can help you. And our Industry Managers and Technical Advisers offer sector insight and updates through ad hoc support to networking meetings
• Tracking. Different tools that can help you monitor spend and apprentices’ performance through to authorising 20% off-the-job training in the apprenticeship standards for gateway evaluation and auditing purposes

Employers in England

If you’re working with a college or training provider, you should tell them that you want to use our expert on-programme resources or proven EPA service. Remember that you get to choose the on-programme resources and EPA organisation, because apprenticeships in England are now employer-led. If you’re an employer provider, you can contact us to talk about how you manage your programme and if you want to be set up as a City & Guilds centre. Or if you’re buying our EPA services only, you can use our EPA-only form to arrange this.

Employers in Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland

You should talk to your local college or training provider about helping you with apprentices – and you can search for centres that already deliver City & Guilds qualifications and apprenticeships. Or feel free to contact our national offices so colleagues there can talk through ideas for upskilling and reskilling your workforce by hiring an apprentice and through other programmes.

Colleges and training providers

If you're in England and need to explain why your employer partner should choose our quality apprenticeship service, why not use this simple overview of why your employer partners should consider City & Guilds to get their apprentices through assessment? Feel free to put your own brand on this document too or copy the content. 

If you’re in any part of the UK and want to deliver our apprenticeships and you’re not yet an approved City & Guilds centre, you’ll need to complete our application form. We have a minimum spend threshold to become a centre to ensure our quality assurance model works. We can help you identify other local providers for a joint application if you need – this works really successfully for others already. If you’re already a centre, contact your business manager or simply use Walled Garden to buy our on-programme, EPA or other apprenticeship products. 

If you’re in England and want to use only our EPA service, you can use our EPA-only form to set this up.

If you’re looking for talented people to become your apprentice, you could try our online solution to find the talent you need. The City & Guilds TalentPortal is a simple, web-based system that lets you search for candidates based on the sector they want to work in, their location and experience. And because you can use TalentPortal to post vacancies too, you can reach out to candidates right from the start. It’s a credit-based system meaning you can easily manage your recruitment costs.

To find out more, including a short demo of how TalentPortal works, you can watch our webinar. (You’ll need to fill in your name and email to access the recording.)

Large and small companies can benefit from this as large companies can use it for a complete candidate solution and small companies can manage their own vacancies – including contacting and shortlisting candidates. To use the Government’s national apprenticeship finder, you’ll need to ask a local college or training provider to manage this on your behalf.  Talk to them directly to find out about this.