Start with the uncomfortable number. UK employers spend around £1,700 a year training each member of staff. Once you allow for rising prices, that is nearly a third less than they spent in 2011. The figure comes from the government’s own survey of employers.

And it is not shared out evenly. Researchers found that graduates get about three times as much training at work as everybody else. People earning over £52,200 are nearly twice as likely to be learning at work as people earning under £26,099.

So, if you have been waiting for your employer to offer you something, now you know what you are up against. Here is what you can get on your own.

 

Free English and maths

No grade 4 in GCSE English or maths – a C, in old money? If you are 19 or over, you can study up to Level 2 for free. No earnings test. No employer involved. It does not matter how long ago you left school.

Hardly anyone claims it. If you have ever quietly avoided a job because of the maths, this is the fix.

 

A funded Level 3

A Level 3 qualification is free if you do not already have one. It is also free if you do have one but earn below the threshold, which rises to £26,800 in August 2026. Eighteen different areas of work are covered, plus Level 2 in construction, engineering and manufacturing.

 

A Skills Bootcamp

Up to sixteen weeks, free to you, and they end with a guaranteed job interview. Digital, engineering, construction, logistics and more.

 

The new one, opening this month

The Lifelong Learning Entitlement opens for applications in September, with the first courses starting in January 2027.

It is worth up to £39,160, or about four years of study after 18, and you can spread it across your whole working life. Best of all, you can use it for single modules rather than whole courses. Study one, stop, come back later.

The government has now approved 130 institutions across the country to deliver these courses, including the College.

 

If your employer might pay

Two things have changed in your favour.

Say you run a smaller business, or work for one. From 1 August 2026, apprenticeship training for anyone aged 16 to 24 is fully paid for by the government. The employer pays nothing. From 1 October there is up to £2,000 on top for taking somebody on. And apprenticeships are not just for school leavers – staff who already work there can do them.

The rules for bigger employers have loosened too. They can now spend their training levy on short courses. These can run from one to sixteen weeks, in areas like AI, welding, solar panels and electric vehicle charging points.

 

How to ask

There is a legal right to ask for time off to train, but it covers fewer people than you might think. You have to be an employee, you need six months’ service, and the organisation needs 250 staff or more. It is a right to have your request properly considered – it is not a right to paid study leave.

For everyone else it is just a conversation. And it goes better if you talk about what the business gets rather than what you want.

Try this: name four things. The course. What it costs. The thing it would let you do that the team cannot do now. And the date you would be back to normal hours. Vague asks tend to get vague answers.

 

Where to start

Pick one. Look up whether you qualify. If you do, the worst that happens is you spend an afternoon finding out.

The people who get trained are rarely the ones who needed it most. They are the ones who asked.