Apprenticeship Governing Boards: What does 2026 hold?

Apprenticeship Governing Boards: What does 2026 hold?

I’ve spent many years sitting on or advising the boards and committees of independent training providers, employer providers and universities. It is a feature of my job that I enjoy because of the difference I know it makes when a board is strong.

Here’s what I think boards need to grip in 2026:

Financial sustainability needs proper stress testing. Margins are tight, and growth doesn’t automatically guarantee safety. If it’s at the expense of retention, it’s even more of a risk. What happens if the apprenticeship starts drop by 20%? How reliant are you on one employer, one standard, one funding stream? Do you know what it costs to deliver each programme? These aren’t comfortable questions, but they’re increasingly necessary ones.

Employer Engagement

Employer engagement needs to mean something. Satisfaction scores are fine, but it’s surface-level stuff. What boards ought to be scrutinising is whether employers are shaping your curriculum, your delivery models, and how you prepare learners for assessment. Boards should be asking for evidence of influence and action taken towards employers that put quality, retention and achievement at risk, not just feedback forms.

Teaching and Learning Belong In The Boardroom

Teaching and learning belong in the boardroom. Good boards can tell you what excellent, inclusive teaching looks like in their setting, how they ensure consistency across different delivery models, and how they know it’s making a difference beyond observation grades. If you can’t articulate that, you’re flying blind on the thing that matters most to driving quality. If what you’re being told isn’t triangulated from more than one method, the evaluation isn’t secure.

Your people are your strategy. Recruitment, retention, workload, and capability aren’t HR issues. They’re existential and an increasing challenge. Boards should be looking at workforce data as closely as they look at finance.

Assurance has moved upstairs. It’s not a subcommittee problem. Funding rules, Ofsted, EPA requirements, and subcontracting controls are board-level risks and should be managed as such. The question isn’t whether you have assurance processes. It’s whether they work, connect, and above all else, whether anyone acts on what they find.

SARs

Self-assessment should both celebrate great work and be uncomfortable. The strongest SARs I’ve seen (I’m involved in more SAR scrutiny conversations with providers than I can count each year) are the ones that make people squirm a bit. If your self-assessment explains away weaknesses rather than driving genuine improvement, it’s not doing its job. Long gone are the days when self-assessment was a static Word template to fill in. It is (and always has been) a diagnostic process. Strong boards know this. It’s great to see an overdue shift in Ofsted’s positioning that also reflects their appreciation of the process rather than the report. A SAR is a grade predictor, meaning board members should never be surprised by regulatory outcomes if self-assessment processes do their job well.

Change Capacity and Policy Shifts

Change capacity is a real constraint. Policy shifts, funding changes, EPA reforms, digital expectations – none of this is slowing down. The question is: do you have the leadership bandwidth and organisational maturity to absorb it all without breaking? If not, what actions can be taken to increase capacity when the requirement peaks to avoid your leaders falling over?

Ofsted has placed increased emphasis on the wellbeing of leaders. This is timely based on what is on the horizon. To what extent the board plans to support leaders and their teams on the ground to avoid sleepwalking into a period of instability would be a useful agenda item this quarter.

Surviving and Thriving in 2026

The providers surviving and thriving in 2026 will have benefited from board members who stay curious, ask awkward, thought-provoking questions from a position of experience, and don’t coast on past success. Strong governance doesn’t make delivery harder; it makes it sustainable.

Written by SDN Mesma Group Co-Founder and Director, Lou Doyle 

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