Reform UK's Apprenticeship Plan: What It Includes and How It Would Be Paid For

Reform UK has proposed an "apprenticeship wage credit" that would give small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) a 30% rebate on the wages of apprentices aged 16 to 18. The party's education spokeswoman, Suella Braverman, used GCSE results day to urge school-leavers to consider learning a trade rather than going to university.

The party said the package is the first in a series of proposals aimed at reaching 600,000 apprenticeship starts per year by the end of the next Parliament, which would likely fall in 2034. Reform UK published the announcement on its website under the headline "Suella Braverman announces Reform's apprenticeship package to end the great university scam" Reform UK.

Under the wage credit, businesses would receive a 30% rebate on apprentice wages for 16-to-18-year-olds. Braverman said the measure would save businesses an average of £4,000 a year per apprentice. The package also includes a £2,000 tax-free retention bonus, paid to workers who stay with the business that trained them for at least two years after completing their apprenticeship.

Reform UK estimated the total cost at between £1.48bn and almost £2bn over five years. The party said it would fund the programme by banning all foreign students from accessing taxpayer-funded loans and withdrawing public funding from degree courses it describes as "Mickey Mouse degrees." In an earlier interview in August 2026, Braverman said Reform UK would make students privately fund what she called "woke" university degrees The Telegraph.

Braverman, writing on GCSE results day, advised students receiving their grades not to "get ripped off by the great university scam" and to learn a trade instead. She warned that too many young people were being encouraged to take on up to £50,000 of debt for university. She cited "gender studies" and "golf course studies" as examples of degrees she considers lacking in value.

The remarks on golf course studies drew a sharp response from the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association (BIGGA), which had previously criticised Braverman for similar comments and branded them "negligent and potentially damaging." BIGGA chief executive Jim Croxton said golf course management is a growing industry with more vacancies than qualified applicants BBC News.

Braverman also said universities facing closure should "repurpose" themselves into construction colleges and manufacturing colleges rather than shut down.

The policy sits at the intersection of two politically charged debates: the funding of higher education and the long-standing push across Westminster to shift the balance of post-16 education towards vocational routes — that is, practical, work-based training rather than academic study. Both are devolved matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, meaning the proposals as framed would apply only to England unless the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood), the Welsh Parliament (the Senedd) or the Northern Ireland Assembly (Stormont) chose to mirror them.

The broader context here is worth examining. The funding mechanism is likely to attract the closest scrutiny. Banning foreign students from taxpayer-funded loans and redirecting the savings into apprenticeship subsidies links two separate policy levers, and the costing range of more than £500m spread across five years signals significant uncertainty about how many SMEs would actually take up the offer. The £4,000 average saving per apprentice cited by Braverman depends on wage levels and hours worked, neither of which the party has specified in detail.

The retention bonus structure ties public money to a two-year employment commitment beyond apprenticeship completion. That design echoes earlier Treasury-backed completion bonuses but extends the conditionality period. Whether SMEs in practice retain apprentices for that duration, and whether the bonus genuinely changes behaviour at the margin, are questions the party's own costings do not address.

Braverman's language, framing the proposal as a remedy for a "scam," positions Reform UK firmly against the expansion of higher education that successive governments of both main parties have overseen since the 1990s. Her decision to name specific degree subjects, including golf course management, invites the kind of sector-specific pushback BIGGA has already delivered, and raises questions about how a future Reform UK government would draw the line between funded and unfunded courses.