Though quality childcare provision has never been valued more, the sector is at risk of losing our best colleagues due to ongoing pressures in the industry.
Last year, the Early Years Alliance found that more than 80 per cent of settings are finding it difficult to recruit staff, while one in six believe that staffing shortages are likely to force their setting to close permanently within a year.
Investing in your nursery team not only improves the overall quality in a setting but can also do wonders to motivate and inspire a team, ensuring that you are cultivating a pipeline of talent. Improving practical and academic knowledge are valuable throughout a person’s career, with higher apprenticeships in management and other specialist areas available.
But with tight budgets, it’s important to be savvy about what funding is available to offset training costs. Since the Government introduced the Apprenticeship Levy in 2017, its faced criticism for being too complex. The rules also change frequently, making it hard to keep up.
For example, since the end of January, employers can no longer claim a £3,000 incentive provided for onboarding new apprentices to a business. But there is still plenty of funding available, whether you pay into the levy or not. Here’s what you need to know:
Understanding Government funding
Before understanding what funding you can receive from the Government to train new apprentices, you will need to work out whether your business pays into the Apprenticeship Levy.
The Apprenticeship Levy is a pot of money your business pays into to ensure your business can pay for the training of new apprentices. Your business pays into the levy if its pay bill is over £3 million a year.
And if we're classed as non-levy?
Non-levy paying employers will share the cost of training and assessing their apprentices with the Government (co-investment). The co-investment rate is 5 per cent towards the cost of apprenticeship training. The Government will pay the rest (95 per cent) up to the funding band maximum.
If your business does not pay into the apprenticeship levy, you will only pay 5 per cent of the costs of training a new apprentice. The Government will pay the rest up to the funding band maximum. If you employ less than 50 employees the Government will pay 100 per cent of the training costs for apprentices aged:
• 16 to 18
• 19 to 24 with an education, health and care plan provided by their local authority or has been in the care of their local authority.
If you’re still struggling to get to grips with the levy and would like free support, you can download more information here or get in touch via hello@busybees.com
