Apprentice minimum wage and public sector apprentice pay

The apprentice minimum wage is £8.00 an hour from 1 April 2026. You get it if you are under 19, or if you are 19 or over and in the first year of your apprenticeship. Once you are 19 or over and have finished the first year, your rate becomes the one for your age: £10.85 an hour at 18 to 20 or £12.71 at 21 and over. Many public sector employers pay more than the minimum.

How the rate changes: three examples

The rules look simple on paper and the age and the year interact. These hypothetical cases use the April 2026 rates, which change every April.

Say you start at 16. You are on £8.00 for the first three years. On your 19th birthday you are no longer under 19, but you have completed your first year, so you move to the 18 to 20 rate of £10.85. At 21 you move to £12.71.

Say you start at 18 and turn 19 six months in. You stay on £8.00 until the end of the first year, because you are 19 or over and in the first year. After that the 18 to 20 rate applies.

Say you start at 24. You are on £8.00 for the first year, and then you move to £12.71, a rise of £4.71 an hour. On 37.5 hours that is about £9,185 a year more.

The government’s apprentice guidance says your employment contract should confirm your pay, and that you can check it with the minimum wage calculator.

What the hours include

You must be paid for your normal working hours, for the training that is part of the apprenticeship, and for study towards English and maths qualifications where they are part of the programme. At least 20 per cent of your normal working hours must go on training, whether that is a weekly day, a block at a college or online learning. A 37.5-hour week at £8.00 is £300, or £15,600 over 52 weeks, including training time.

You also get at least 20 days of paid holiday a year on top of bank holidays. If you are under 25 and have been in local authority care, ask your training provider about a bursary payment.

NHS apprentice pay

NHS employers must pay at least the legal apprentice rate. Anything above that is set by the employer and shown on the advert, so compare the advert’s salary line with the band for the same kind of job. For reference, band 2 is £25,272 a year in England, about £12.92 an hour.

Current staff get some protection. Since 1 July 2024 the NHS terms and conditions say that if an existing employee starts a formal apprenticeship that would lead to a job on the same band or a higher one, their basic pay for the programme is the higher of two things: the pay a new entrant to the apprenticeship role would get, or the step point they would have reached in their old job. They keep progressing up the steps as if they had stayed. This covers basic pay only, and enhancements depend on the apprenticeship role. NHS apprenticeships covers the routes, including the nursing degree apprenticeship.

The April 2026 uprating in the NHS

When the National Living Wage went to £12.71 in April 2026, NHS Employers told trusts to check apprentices as well as band 1 and band 2 staff. Its note named bank workers, salary sacrifice arrangements and apprentices as groups where pay had to stay at or above the legal rates. Band 1 and both band 2 points were temporarily lifted to £24,853 before the 3.3 per cent pay award replaced that.

Civil Service and councils

Civil Service apprenticeships are advertised by individual departments with a salary on the advert, and the Civil Service apprenticeships guide explains how to find them. Councils and schools advertise apprenticeships through their own sites and the government’s Find an apprenticeship service. In both, the minimum rules above still apply, whatever the advert says. The public sector apprenticeships guide compares the schemes.

Tax on apprentice pay

Apprentices pay income tax and National Insurance like other employees once their pay passes £12,570 a year. Employers pay no employer National Insurance for apprentices under 25 on earnings up to £50,270, which is one reason public bodies run so many schemes. For your own hours, the take-home pay calculator shows what is left after deductions.