Level 4 Data Analyst Apprenticeship (ST0118): What It Covers and How It Is Assessed

Part of our topic guides on Data & AI Apprenticeships and Data Analyst Careers.

By James Cotton, Founder, iO-Sphere

Who it suits

This guide is for two readers: an employer who has been asked to support someone on the apprenticeship, and an adult wondering whether to take it. Between them they need to know whether the job in question fits the standard, what it costs, how much time it takes and how the final grade is reached.

The standard puts the job in one line: "Collect, organise and study data to provide business insight." It is not tied to a sector. The occupation "is found in any employer in any sector that uses data to make business decisions", and the employers involved in creating the standard were Estee Lauder, UBS, Risual Ltd, Network Rail, DMG Media and the University of West London.

Most starts are by people aged 25 or over. Department for Education apprenticeship statistics show 7,140 starts in 2024/25, of which 6,400 were by people aged 25 or over: about nine in ten. Another 450 were aged 22 to 24, 210 were 19 to 21 and 80 were under 19.

These are counts of starts, so a person who begins two apprenticeships appears twice, and the table gives age with nothing on employment. Our reading is that this is a programme taken mostly by adults already in work. Starts have also nearly doubled, from 3,720 in 2020/21, and the first three quarters of 2025/26 (August to April, provisional) brought 5,060 more, 4,500 of them aged 25 or over.

That is who joins our version of it, which we call Advanced Data & AI: existing employees who already work with data, from the team member who keeps ending up pulling the numbers together to a senior manager who wants to stop relying on analysts.

Entry requirements and getting a place

The standard sets no entry requirements and contains no mandatory qualification, so it asks for no degree; employers and providers set their own criteria. Kaplan's Data Analyst Level 4 page, for instance, gives a typical entry of two A levels or another Level 3 qualification, or 12 months of work experience in the last 24 months.

On English and maths, the standard defers to the funding rules. For an apprentice aged 19 or over at the start, English and maths are an optional part of the programme, with the employer's agreement, and are not needed to achieve the apprenticeship, a change the Department for Education announced on 11 February 2025. Someone aged 16 to 18 at the start without an approved level 2 in both must achieve it before completing.

An apprenticeship is a job with training attached, so a place comes through an employer. With us, the programme is laid over the job someone already holds: they apply, and our admissions team helps them prepare the conversation with their employer. Someone without an employer can search vacancies on the government's Find an apprenticeship service, or weigh the other ways in through apprenticeship or bootcamp.

What it costs

The funding band for ST0118 is £15,000, which Find apprenticeship training describes as the maximum government funding for training and assessment costs.

What the employer itself pays depends on the apprentice's age and on whether the employer pays the levy, the charge on employers with a pay bill over £3 million. For starts from 1 August 2026, the funding rules have the government fund all of the training and assessment costs, up to the band, for an apprentice aged 16 to 24 at an employer that does not pay the levy or has run out of levy funds.

For an apprentice aged 25 or over it funds 95% at an employer that does not pay the levy and 75% at a levy payer whose funds have run out. On a price at the full £15,000 band, that leaves the employer £750 or £3,750 (our sums). A levy payer with funds pays from its levy account. The employer guide works through the figures.

The work the standard describes

The standard is made of 12 duties, 15 knowledge statements, 15 skills and 7 behaviours, and the duties read like a piece of analysis from start to finish. The analyst chooses data sources and explains why each is in or out, agrees reporting needs with clients and colleagues, then collects, compiles and cleanses the data.

From there the work becomes visible to a manager. The analyst builds performance dashboards and reports, keeps them maintained, and produces "standard and non standard statistical and data analysis reports". Then comes interpretation: trends and patterns found, conclusions drawn, a response recommended and the results presented to stakeholders.

Care with data runs through it. Reporting to management means "ensuring data is used and represented ethically in line with relevant legislation (e.g. GDPR which incorporates Privacy by Design)", and data must be stored and archived within the law. The last duty asks the analyst to "Practice continuous self learning to keep up to date with technological developments".

Behind the duties sit knowledge of database design, data quality risks, statistics, data ethics and "the principles of descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics". The job titles the standard lists are Data Analyst, Departmental Data Analyst, Problem Analyst, Junior Analyst, Marketing Data Analyst and Energy Data Analyst.

What the standard leaves open

Search the standard and its assessment plan for SQL, Python, Excel, Power BI or Tableau and nothing comes back. ST0118 names no specific tool. Where tools appear, the wording is generic: an apprentice should "select and apply the most appropriate data tools to achieve the optimum outcome", and keep up with "data languages, tools and software".

Search for AI and the result is the same. Neither "AI", "machine learning", "algorithm" nor any form of automation appears in the record or the plan. The nearest material is predictive and prescriptive analytics, "data mining, time series forecasting and modelling techniques", and Digital Twins, mentioned as one example of a data source.

The software, then, is the training provider's choice. The registry records and figures on this page were read on 1 October 2026, when Find apprenticeship training listed 128 providers offering the course. Two programmes on the same standard can teach quite different tools, so the curriculum is worth asking about before anyone signs.

Ours is SQL, Power BI or Tableau, Python, predictive modelling and AI-assisted analysis. That list is our design, and the AI-assisted analysis is our addition to a standard that says nothing on the subject. iO-Sphere is listed on the apprenticeship provider register (APAR).

370 hours of paid time

The standard sets 370 hours of off-the-job training. Under the apprenticeship funding rules for 2026 to 2027, that training is statutory and takes place "during the apprentice's normal working hours", meaning the hours they would normally be paid for, excluding overtime. For an employer, that is time taken out of the working week.

The standard gives a typical 24 months on programme before the gateway, when the apprentice moves into assessment, and assessment typically adds three months. The funding rules state "no direct delivery link" between the hours and the duration, and set a minimum practical period of 8 months.

iO-Sphere delivers its apprenticeships in around 15 months of training, then about three months of assessment. Spread across our 15-month programme, the 370 hours come to about six hours a week.

How the end-point assessment works

The plan in force is end-point assessment plan ST0118/AP03, aligned with version 1.1 of the standard. It has two parts and contains no knowledge test, multiple-choice test or written exam. There is still writing to do, because the project ends in a report.

The employer decides when the apprentice is ready. The plan lets it "take advice from the apprentice's training provider(s), but the decision must ultimately be made solely by the employer." At that gateway the apprentice submits a portfolio, typically 10 pieces of evidence, and the assessment must then be completed within a period of typically three months.

The first method is the project. It is real work: the plan describes "a data analysis task tailored to the organisational requirements of the apprentice's employer which reflects the normal working practices within the role", and says the employer "will ensure it has a real business application". Typically it takes six weeks, with two more weeks to write the report.

The report must cover, among other things, scope and KPIs, a project plan, relevant legislation and policy, the analysis, findings and recommendations. With ten days' notice, the apprentice then presents it: 40 minutes in all, typically 20 presenting and 20 answering at least eight questions.

The second method is a 60-minute professional discussion in which an independent assessor asks at least 10 open questions. The portfolio feeds it and is never graded. In the plan's words: "The portfolio of examples is not directly assessed. It underpins the professional discussion and therefore should not be marked".

	Project	Professional discussion
Written	Report, up to 3,500 words	None marked
Spoken	40 minutes, 8+ questions	60 minutes, 10+ questions
Grades	Fail, Pass, Distinction	Fail, Pass, Distinction

The word limit carries a tolerance of plus or minus 10% and excludes appendices.

Both methods count equally: two Passes give a Pass overall; a Pass and a Distinction, either way round, give a Merit; two Distinctions give a Distinction. A Fail in either fails the assessment, so Merit exists only as an overall grade. Re-sits and re-takes are at the employer's discretion, and the overall grade is not capped.

The employer chooses the assessment organisation from the Apprenticeship Provider and Assessment Register, and Find an end-point assessment organisation listed 19 for this standard. Each independent assessor must have "at least 3 years of experience".

How apprentices fare nationally

In the DfE national achievement rate tables for 2024/25, part of the Apprenticeships release for academic year 2025/26, 58.2% of 5,620 leavers on ST0118 achieved, against 65.4% across all apprenticeships. Behind that, the pass rate among those who completed was 98.3% while the retention rate was 59.2%: the shortfall comes from people leaving before the end, not from the assessment itself.

That gap is the thing to probe with any provider, and the providers guide shows how to read their figures against it.

A revision with no date

The standard's record carries a banner saying it "is in the process of being revised or adjusted", and that the current version remains approved for delivery meanwhile. Skills England's revisions and adjustments status report gives the scope: since 1 February 2026, ST0118 has been listed for "Revision to the assessment plan under the 2025/2026 assessment reforms".

Neither a date nor any content for the revised plan has been published, and Skills England's list holds no revised version of ST0118. Until one is published, the plan above is the one apprentices sit.

Frequently asked questions

Can someone in a finance or marketing role take it?

Yes, if the role involves the analysis the duties describe. The standard places the occupation in "any employer in any sector that uses data to make business decisions", and Marketing Data Analyst is one of its listed job titles. The test is whether the job gives the person data to collect, report on and present, because the project has to be a real task in that business.

Can prior learning reduce the 370 hours?

Yes, where it is evidenced. The 370 hours represent the full content of the standard and apply to an apprentice with no relevant prior learning; under the funding rules, evidenced prior learning can lower them, but no programme may fall below 187 hours.

What comes after Level 4?

For someone who wants to keep training, iO-Sphere delivers Data Engineering (Level 5), and data apprenticeships by level sets the levels side by side.