Keep the graduates you hire now and add a provider, a training plan and an assessment. Pitch the scheme at a level the 2026 rules fund and the training is largely paid for.
Run Your Graduate Scheme as a Levy-Funded Apprenticeship
By James Cotton · Last updated · 6 min read
Part of our topic guides on Government-Funded Data & AI Training and AI Skills for Business.
By James Cotton, Founder, iO-Sphere
What your scheme already has, and what the rules add
A well-run graduate scheme already meets four of the apprenticeship's conditions. Four more come with the conversion, and none of them asks you to change who you hire.
Already in a graduate scheme
- A job with real work in it. The graduate's role and rotations stay as you designed them, and that work is what the training is built on.
- A line manager. The person who already reviews the graduate's work knows what good looks like in your business, and the training plan leans on that judgement.
- A development plan. The objectives you set for the first year or two become the starting point for the training plan.
- Time set aside for learning. The hours you already protect for courses and projects map onto off-the-job training.
What the apprenticeship adds
- A training provider, who delivers the training against an approved standard and coaches the graduate through it.
- A training plan, agreed between you, the graduate and the provider.
- Off-the-job training hours, counted and evidenced across the programme.
- A final assessment against the standard, which closes the programme.
What a converted scheme looks like in practice
Take a graduate whose first placement is in finance, reconciling accounts month by month. On Advanced Data & AI, the training plan is written around that reconciliation work. The evidence for the standard then comes from figures the business needed checked anyway.
When the graduate rotates into the next placement, the plan moves with them. The new team's work picks up the parts of the standard still to cover, and the manager in each placement knows which parts those are. Nothing about the rotation itself has to be redesigned.
Part of each working week stays protected for off-the-job training, counted against the plan, much as your scheme already guards time for its own courses. That training can run alongside learners from other companies or in a cohort built around your organisation. The intake date is worth setting against your levy year, and at the end of the programme the graduate sits the final assessment on the standard.
The graduate's degree is not a bar
Employers often assume a degree rules a graduate out. The 2026-27 apprenticeship funding rules test something narrower: under paragraph 35, funds must not pay for knowledge, skills and behaviours the apprentice already has, and paragraph 63 puts the onus on the provider to evidence that the person "requires significant new knowledge, skills and behaviours" for the job.
Neither test asks whether a degree exists. Levels come next. An apprenticeship at a higher level than any qualification the graduate holds is fundable by paragraph 68.1. For the same or a lower level, paragraph 68.2 sets a condition: the start is fundable "if the apprenticeship will allow the individual to acquire significant new skills and the provider can show that the content of the training is materially different from any prior qualification".
That second test is the one graduate schemes usually meet. A history or biology graduate on a Level 4 data standard is the plain case: the content is materially different from the degree, and the start is fundable.
A related degree changes the price, not the eligibility. The provider's initial assessment maps what the graduate already knows against the standard, and the mechanism in paragraph 39.3.2 takes recognised prior learning out of both the content and the price. A graduate with some statistics behind them may start on a smaller programme at a lower cost, and the initial assessment decides.
Pitch it at a level the rules fund
This is where a graduate scheme can lose its funding. Since 1 January 2026, a Level 7 apprenticeship start is fundable only if the apprentice is aged 21 or under at the start of training, with the exception of those aged 22 to 24 who have an education, health and care plan or are care leavers (funding rules 2026-27, paragraph 32). The Department for Education announced the change on 27 May 2025, and for other Level 7 starts levy funds cannot be used either.
Below Level 7, a scheme can be built for every graduate in the intake. Our routes form the lower rungs: Advanced Data & AI and AI Transformation at Level 4, and Data Engineering at Level 5, with bands and durations compared in AI apprenticeships for employers.
Above them, Skills England's 2026 listings show two Level 6 standards in data and AI:
- Machine learning engineer: £22,000 band, 24 months typical, a Level 6 without a degree attached. A revision is due, and the latest start date for the current version is 10 December 2026.
- Data scientist (integrated degree): £19,000 band, 36 months typical.
Level 6 is the next rung for a graduate who has finished one of our Level 4 or 5 routes, and the prior-learning tests above apply to that step as they did to the first. Level 7 is the rung beyond, open only to starts that meet the age rule.
Why the structure makes a strong scheme stronger
Graduates are still the larger intake. The Institute of Student Employers' Student Recruitment Survey 2025, a survey of 155 of its member employers published in October 2025, found graduate hiring down 8% and apprentice hiring up 8% over the 2024-25 cycle, with members still hiring 1.8 graduates for every apprentice.
A graduate scheme already has what an apprenticeship needs most: an intake worth training, an employer brand that attracts it and managers who know how to bring new people on. Converting it keeps all of that. It adds the parts a scheme often improvises, namely a standard to train against, a provider accountable for the training and time that stays protected when the business is busy.
The final assessment gives the scheme an exit standard. Every graduate who completes it has been assessed against the same approved standard, so you can tell the business, and the next intake, exactly what finishing your graduate apprenticeship means.
Frequently asked questions
Can a graduate aged 25 or over be funded?
Yes, at Level 6 and below. Level 7 is closed at that age, because the only exception to the age rule covers apprentices aged 22 to 24. Below Level 7, a graduate's age at the start of training shapes the co-investment but not whether the start can be funded.
Can we keep calling it our graduate scheme?
Yes. The rules set conditions on the training, not on what you call the programme. Your recruitment campaign, your employer brand and the names of your rotations stay yours, and the graduate will still know they are an apprentice, since they agree the training plan with you and the provider.
Does the levy pay the graduate's salary?
No. Levy funds pay for the training and the final assessment only. The salary stays with you, as it does on any graduate scheme, and you set it the way you set graduate pay now.
Which standard suits a graduate who already has a data degree?
Start from the overlap. A data or statistics degree may cover much of a Level 4 data standard, and the provider has to show the training is materially different from it. Where the overlap is large, the initial assessment will point towards a standard with more new content, such as Level 5 Data Engineering, with the Level 6 standards as the rung above.
Build a data-literate workforce
Data apprenticeships funded through the Growth & Skills Levy: £0 for any apprentice under 25, and most of the cost covered for older starts.