In February 2025, the Department for Education made a series of apprenticeship assessment reform announcements. Their outlined changes are aimed at:

• enabling greater flexibility, allowing for more timely, proportionate and efficient assessment

• ensuring apprentices are assessed on areas employers deem most essential to confirming occupational competency

• getting skilled workers into the workplace, whilst removing any unnecessary barriers. 

As part of its apprenticeship reform announcements in February 2025, the government introduced a set of assessment principles. These principles aim to streamline the assessment process by enabling more flexibility in design and delivery. The principles are:

• Introduce shorter, high-level, less prescriptive assessment plans.

• Assessment is more proportionate to the competency being tested.

• Include the minimum number of assessments required to confirm occupational competency.

• Remove duplication, including crossover of any criteria covered by included qualifications.

• Where appropriate, assessments can be designed to take place on-programme.

• Where appropriate, training providers will be able to deliver elements of the assessment, which will be quality assured by assessment organisations.

• Make the best use of technology.

• Enable employers to verify Behaviours.

Apprenticeship assessment is being reformed. This includes the removal of the need for all assessments to be done at the end of the apprenticeship journey, allowing for greater flexibility for apprentices to be assessed whilst on-programme. This will only apply where it makes sense to do so, enabling a more authentic demonstration of competence. It is expected that some assessment will still take place at the end of the apprenticeship journey.

Under the new apprenticeship assessment principles, training providers may deliver and assess specific components, where appropriate, and subject to oversight by the assessment organisation (AO). As part of their assessment strategy, AOs will determine, on a standard-by-standard basis, which assessment elements may be delivered by providers, and where they demonstrate the necessary expertise, resources, and capacity to do so.

Assessment plans are being streamlined and restructured to adopt a more high-level, less prescriptive format. Key changes include:

• The reduction of assessment plan length to 2-3 pages.

• A focus on broad assessment outcomes rather than mapping individual knowledge, skills, and behaviours (KSBs) to specific assessment methods.

• The removal of detailed descriptions of mandatory assessment methods, offering assessment organisations greater flexibility in assessment design.