Trusted by businesses across the UK
What you'd pay
It comes down to one thing: whether you pay the apprenticeship levy. You do if your annual pay bill is over £3 million, which is roughly a hundred staff. Below that you don't, and the government covers most or all of it directly.
Our AI programmes · funding of up to £18,000
Our marketing programme · funding of up to £11,000
Same rates. For most smaller employers with someone aged 25 or over, that's 5% of the cost, up to £550.
Short courses · £750 each, fully funded
Nothing to pay in almost every case. The one exception is a levy-paying business that's spent its account, where someone aged 25 or over costs £187.50.
These are the maximum available for each programme rather than a fixed price. Rates in force from 1 August 2026, subject to an eligibility check.
One thing worth knowing
Levy money expires. Funds now run out twelve months after they go into your account, down from twenty-four. If you pay the levy and you're not using it, you're losing it.
Would you qualify? Five checks
Someone needs to act as the employer, and this is the one that catches people out
If the person being trained is a director, shareholder or owner, the rules need someone else in the business to take the employer role.
A fellow director, a chair, a non-executive, a co-owner, a trustee. Someone of similar standing who'll sign off the training time. It isn't a boss and it isn't a reporting line.
But if you're a sole director with nobody else of standing in the business, this can't be funded, and there's no way round it. Sole traders and people working under IR35 are out too.
You'll need a contract of employment, so owners paid only through dividends should check with us first. Most owner-managed businesses are fine.
They're 19 or over.
No upper limit at all.
They work in England, at least half their hours.
Working from home counts, and it doesn't matter where the company's registered in the UK. For example, someone working three set days a week in England for a Welsh business qualifies; the pattern just needs to be regular and agreed at the start.
They're properly employed, with time to train.
On your payroll for the full duration, and a contract of at least thirty hours a week. The regulations allow twenty-four. We ask for thirty, because we take up eight hours of the week and there needs to be enough left to do the job.
They're not funded elsewhere.
Not in full-time education, and not on another government-funded course. Anyone currently doing a degree has to finish it first.
What won't stop you.
An existing degree or MBA is usually fine, as long as what they learn with us is genuinely new. The only real exception is an existing qualification in AI or Marketing, depending which programme they're applying for, in which case we'd look at it case by case.
What happens after you say yes
A twenty-minute call.
We confirm what you qualify for and what you'd pay, and recommend a starting point. If we're not right for you, we say so here rather than three months in. If you've already had this conversation with one of our team, skip straight to step two.
Two short forms.
Your details, and a short skills assessment so we know where to pitch the teaching. Ten minutes each.
An eligibility call.
We check you qualify for the funding, confirm the right programme and the right level, and agree a start date.
We take on the paperwork.
Our funding specialist walks you through setting up your apprenticeship service account, reserving the funding, which takes about ten minutes, and then prepares your contracts. Everything's signed online. We know Gov red tape is the part you'll dread. We do most of it for you.
Your person starts.
They get their dates, meet their group and begin.
Allow three to four weeks from the first call to a start date. You can reserve funding up to three months ahead, so booking early costs nothing and holds the place.
Not ready for a call?
Email ask@workingknowledge.org.uk with two things: roughly how many people you employ, and the age of the person you've got in mind. We'll tell you where you stand, and we won't follow up unless you ask us to.
