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We are pleased to announce that the National Pharmacy Association and Skills 4 Pharmacy have come together to offer Level 2 and Level 3 pharmacy apprenticeships to NPA members in England. The NPA will refer interested members to Skills 4 Pharmacy who will deliver the apprenticeships.
Skills 4 Pharmacy is a trusted provider of apprentices to some of the UK’s leading pharmacy employers – with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Day Lewis Pharmacy, Barts Health NHS Trust and Cohens chemist among them.
Read more about this partnership in an InPharmacy article here.
We will be providing more details of the apprenticeships by end of October.
August 2022
Until recently, the NPA offered a Pharmacy retail Level 2 apprenticeship working in partnership with Qube Learning. This partnership ended in August 2022.
The new Level 2 Standard for Pharmacy Apprenticeships was approved by the Institute of Apprenticeships in November 2018 and the Level 3 Standard was approved in the summer of 2019.
The Government’s (Education and Skills Funding Agency – ESFA) register re-opened in mid-December 2018. The NPA made a submission to become a main training provider on this register at the end of January 2019 and was informed at the end of May 2019 that it had been successful. We were appointed to the register in August 2019. As the NPA has not delivered apprenticeships since being appointed, we have now been removed from the register (Oct. 21).
Initially, the NPA hoped to pilot apprenticeships with a small group of members in England who pay the Apprenticeship Levy. We considered working with a third-party apprenticeship provider for this pilot, as we may have needed this provider to deliver the English and maths qualifications that are part of the apprenticeship requirement.
At the end of 2018, the NPA undertook a survey of members with 15+ branches to ascertain their appetite for Pharmacy apprenticeships and to understand how many of them pay into the Apprenticeship Levy.
The results of this survey revealed a good appetite for pharmacy apprenticeships, the preferred learning formats, the need for the NPA to provide support with the recruitment of apprentices, the popularity of optional learning modules and some concern around the 20% off-the-job training rule.
The results were very helpful and will be considered by the NPA teams in any future development of an apprenticeship programme.
Several Levy-paying members expressed the desire to start using some of their Levy payments for Leadership or Customer Service apprenticeships. The NPA signed an agreement with Qube Learning in spring 2019, a privately owned training provider, who is already on the RoATP.
Qube was our partner to deliver non-clinical apprenticeships for our members.
Click for more information, on the benefits of taking on an apprentice as well as the current funding availability for apprenticeships.