An apprenticeship standard defines a single occupation. It sets out the knowledge, skills and behaviours an apprentice must have by the end of the programme, the typical duration, the funding band, and how the apprentice will be assessed. Standards are developed by groups of employers and maintained by Skills England.
Every standard has a reference beginning ST – for example, the Data Technician standard is ST0126 and the Business Administrator standard is ST0070. That reference, not the title, is the thing to quote: titles change and are often similar to one another.
Standards replaced frameworks
Standards replaced the older apprenticeship frameworks. All remaining frameworks were withdrawn to new learners on 31 July 2020, so essentially every apprenticeship starting today is on a standard. A very small number of framework starts still appear in the data, where a learner has been permitted to return to a framework they had previously begun after a long break.
This matters for anyone looking at a long time series. Figures from before 2020 mix frameworks and standards, and the two are not directly comparable in content or in duration.
Versions
Standards are revised. A standard can be available for starts, paused, in revision or retired, and it can exist in more than one version, with different content and sometimes a different funding band. Two apprentices with the same job title can be on different versions of the same standard.
Version matters more than usual at the moment, because standards are being moved onto revised assessment plans in phases. The version an apprentice is on determines how they are assessed – see how are apprenticeships assessed?
Any serious analysis of a standard therefore needs the version as well as the reference. Skills England publishes the current status and version of every standard; this Explorer does not yet hold that register, so its standard-level pages show achievement-rate data only and say so.
Routes and subject areas
Every standard sits in one of the fifteen occupational routes – Digital, Health and Science, Engineering and Manufacturing, Care Services and so on. Separately, DfE classifies apprenticeships by sector subject area, which describes subject content rather than occupation. The two classifications do not map onto each other one for one, and route classifications can change between releases as Skills England updates them.