Apprenticeships were never just for young people. Pretending otherwise has created the problem we are now trying to fix.

Earlier this year I became a CIPD Chartered Fellow. Shortly before that, I was named South Yorkshire Degree Apprentice of the Year. I was the first in my family to pursue postgraduate study, and I got there through the apprenticeship route, a route that is now being significantly reshaped by government policy. That experience is not exceptional in itself; what it shows is how apprenticeships can function as a genuine alternative to the traditional academic ladder, especially for people who might otherwise struggle to access postgraduate‑level learning.

I want to be transparent about why I am writing this. Not to defend my own path, and not to make a narrow professional argument about HR qualifications. I am writing it because the policy debate around apprenticeships has become flattened; reduced to a binary between supporting young people and defending professional development, when the reality is considerably more complex, and the consequences of getting it wrong will be felt by real organisations and real people for years to come.

I also write it as someone who has spent a decade working in recruitment, HR, and workforce development, with a focus on inclusion and social mobility and who recently gave evidence to the Department for Education and to Baroness Jacqui Smith from a lived‑experience, employer, and practitioner perspective. That evidence was part of a much broader body of testimony from employers, researchers, and practitioners. The case was made clearly and collectively. The decision to proceed with the removal of Level 7 funding nonetheless, without a published impact assessment, remains difficult to reconcile with the evidence that was placed in front of decision‑makers. This is no better evidenced than NHSE stepping in to offer limited funding for some of the standards.

Why youth unemployment is a real and urgent problem

Let me start where the government starts, because the concern is legitimate.

Youth unemployment in the UK is not a manufactured crisis. It is the product of intersecting pressures that have accumulated over more than a decade: sluggish economic growth, the structural disruption of Brexit to sectors that historically employed large numbers of young people, the scarring effects of Covid-19 on a generation that entered the labour market during or immediately after a period of profound economic contraction, and rising employer National Insurance contributions that have made recruiting young, inexperienced workers a harder business case to make.

Add to this a changing education landscape: the expansion of university participation, the growing complexity of the qualifications framework, the persistent gap between what schools prepare young people for and what employers actually need and you have a genuine policy problem that deserves a serious response.

The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training remains stubbornly high. For those young people and the communities they come from, that is not an abstraction. It is a lived reality with long-term consequences for earnings, wellbeing, and social mobility. Any serious workforce policy has to grapple with this.

“The concern about young people and the labour market is legitimate. The question is whether the solution being proposed is well-matched to the problem or whether it solves one thing by creating another.”

The tension at the heart of the apprenticeship system

Apprenticeships were originally conceived as a vehicle for young people. A structured route into employment and a trade, combining on-the-job learning with formal development, designed explicitly to address NEET rates and give young people a credible alternative to the academic pathway. That original intention was always about access, opportunity and social mobility. It was a policy instrument with a clear social purpose.

But what actually happened when the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in 2017 was more complicated. Employers, who now had a ring-fenced pot of funding they were obligated to spend, shaped the market. The apprenticeship standards that were developed and approved for delivery were market-led: employers could evidence a need for specific training and development, submit that evidence, and have a standard approved. The result was a qualification landscape that reflected employer demand, not the original social purpose of apprenticeships.

That is not inherently wrong. Employer-led standards have produced some genuinely excellent programmes including Level 7 standards for Senior People Professionals and Senior Leaders that filled a real gap in how organisations develop their most strategically important capabilities. But it does mean that the apprenticeship system drifted, over time, from its original purpose. It became as much a vehicle for filling gaps in employer-provided on-the-job training as it was a route for young people into the workforce.

Government is now trying to correct that drift. The Growth and Skills Levy, with its focus on foundation apprenticeships and shorter modular courses through the new Apprenticeship Units, is an attempt to reorient the system toward its original social purpose. That intention deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed.

The problem is not the intention. The problem is the blanket approach to defunding Level 7, and the absence of any honest reckoning with what that removes from the system — particularly for the public sector.

What the funding change means in practice

From 1 January 2026, government co-investment funding for Level 7 apprenticeships is available only for apprentices who are either under 22 at the start of their programme, or under 25 with an Education, Health and Care plan or care experience background. Anyone who started a Level 7 apprenticeship before 1 January 2026 continues to be funded through to completion. For everyone else, the experienced practitioner, the mid-career professional, the person who found their route into postgraduate study through the Levy, the government contribution is gone (unless Life Long Learning is expanded). Employers can still fund these programmes from their Levy pot, but the number of young people who qualify or will realistically be in suitable roles will be drastically lower. Employers can fund these courses outside of the levy but for many public sector organisations with constrained budgets and competing workforce priorities, removing the co-investment fundamentally changes what is viable. Even less so for SMEs and the charity sector.

What this removes and who it removes it from

Before Level 7 apprenticeships existed, the route into senior professional practice was narrow. You needed a relevant degree, the financial means to fund postgraduate study, and an employer willing to invest. The profession talked about widening participation, but the structural conditions made it difficult in practice.

Level 7 changed that. It created a funded pathway that allowed experienced practitioners often people from non-traditional backgrounds, first-generation graduates, people who had worked their way up without formal qualifications, to access postgraduate-level development without sacrificing their income or career continuity. For public sector organisations under sustained financial pressure, it was also one of the only viable mechanisms for building senior leadership capability from within, rather than continually recruiting from outside.

The people this benefited most were not those who would have found another route anyway. They were people for whom this was the route. Removing it does not level the playing field. It narrows it again quietly, without headlines, in a way that will not be visible in policy documents but will be felt in organisations and careers for years.

There is also a specific public sector dimension here that the policy debate has largely ignored. The NHS is navigating one of the most significant structural and cultural transformations in its history. Tom Simmons, Chief HR and OD Officer at NHS England, has spoken about the shift toward a more human-centred, responsive model of people support. Delivering that shift requires senior people professionals with real strategic capability. The Senior People Professional apprenticeship standard was one of the most effective mechanisms the NHS had for developing that capability from within its own workforce. That is now significantly harder to access for anyone over 22 without an EHC plan.

On foundation apprenticeships — a word of caution, not opposition

I want to be careful here, because I do not want to position this as a debate between those who care about young people and those who care about professional development. That framing helps nobody.

Foundation apprenticeships, and the broader shift toward shorter modular learning through Apprenticeship Units, represent a genuine attempt to make the system more accessible and more responsive to the needs of young people entering the labour market. That is worth supporting. The structural barriers that prevent young people from accessing quality work experience, mentoring, and early career development are real and longstanding, and if the new approach addresses even some of those barriers meaningfully, it will have done something valuable.

The caution I would offer is about clarity and coherence. The qualifications landscape in England is already complex. Adding new tiers and formats without clear articulation of how they connect to existing pathways, how they are valued by employers, and how they lead somewhere meaningful for the young people who take them risks creating confusion rather than opportunity. We have seen this before. The lessons are worth learning from rather than repeating.

The question worth asking is not whether foundation apprenticeships are good or bad in principle. It is whether removing Level 7 co-investment funding was a necessary condition of expanding them, or whether these could have been complementary rather than competing priorities.

“The question is not whether we should support young people into work. Of course we should. The question is whether dismantling what was working for one group was a necessary condition of helping another.”

What employers and people professionals should do now

If you lead a people function, an OD team, or a workforce development programme in a public sector organisation, the practical implications are immediate and require active decisions, not passive acceptance.

Review your Levy position now. Understand what is in your pot, what is committed, and how this will be spent going forward. The Senior Leader Level 7 programme was one of the most popular if not the most funded programme. Where that capacity exists, protect apprenticeship programmes deliberately and make the case to your board for doing so.

Think carefully about who in your organisation would have benefited from this route, and what alternative development pathways you can create. The funding has changed; the need has not. People who would have accessed senior development through Level 7 apprenticeships do not stop needing development. The responsibility to find ways to reach them does not disappear with the funding.

And if you have influence with networks, regional bodies, or national professional associations, use it. The evidence base exists. The case has been made and continues to be made. Sustained, collective advocacy from employers and practitioners is more likely to shift the policy conversation than individual frustration expressed privately.