Degree apprenticeships: a guide for higher education providers

The annual funding we allocate to higher education providers includes support for apprenticeships.

If a provider registers with us in our ‘approved (fee cap)’ category, this means it is eligible to receive direct grant funding from us.

Such funding is designed to help providers deliver the courses that they offer, but it does not cover the entire teaching cost of a course.

Instead, it supports subjects that are more expensive for providers to deliver and any priorities the government may have (such as funding to support student access to higher education).

Our funding, for example, supports science, engineering and healthcare subjects, which are all more costly to deliver. This in turn means that, among other programmes and courses, our grant funding supports:

• science apprenticeships
• engineering apprenticeships
• healthcare apprenticeships.

Funding competition

In September 2023 we launched a funding competition to support the development of Level 6 degree apprenticeships.

We will distribute up to £40 million of funding via three funding waves between January 2024 and July 2025.

This aims to:

• expand existing provision among providers already offering degree apprenticeships (strand 1)
• expand provision among providers new to the degree apprenticeships market (strand 2)
• increase equality of opportunity in Level 6 degree apprenticeships.

Allocations

Evaluation

Ipsos UK are evaluating the degree apprenticeship funding competition, supported by the Education Policy Institute.

They have produced a thematic report highlighting early findings from wave 1 of the programme and a further interim evaluation report on final findings from wave 1 of the programme.