When will my employer pay for further education?

Further education for employees may be welcomed by employers, if the qualification improves employees’ skills and benefits the workplace. Basic literacy and numeracy courses, vocational skills training, and career-development studies are available to employers from a range of Learning Providers, often in partnership with government funding. These courses may be completed in or out of the workplace, or a through combination of the two.

If you are an employed ‘young person’ who is over 16 but under 18 years old, you could be entitled to time off for study, if you have not reached a level of education equivalent to five passes at GCSE (Level 2). Therefore you could take some paid time off during working hours in order to achieve a relevant Level 2-type qualification. An employer should allow 18 year-olds to finish a study course they have already started.

If you are not a ‘young person’ and want to study and you work in an organisation of 250 or more, you have the right to request time off for further education which is called 'time to train'. The training must be relevant to your present job. In order to qualify, you must have given 26 weeks’ continuous service to your employer, but courses are not time-limited. For example, you could request to study a foreign language if your company has started trading abroad, or you could improve your written English skills for paperwork.

You should make a proper request to your employer for time to train and it would help to outline why this would benefit their business. If there is no government funding for the course you want to study, your employer is not obligated to fund the training or to pay you the same salary for time off, although they may do so in a variety of ways. An employer may ask you to work flexibly, for example, so you can make up for time taken off work.

Additionally, in England there is a three-tier programme of apprenticeships. These periods of on-the-job training may last up to four years and are available in an increasingly wide range of business sectors. Although apprenticeships do not guarantee employment at the end of your training, they do lead to nationally-recognised qualifications. The National Minimum Wage for apprentices is £2.60 per hour, although employers often pay more as the apprentice progresses.