The UK's specialist AI apprenticeship provider. 22 apprenticeships from L3 to L6, three new AI Leadership Units for senior leaders, plus Coachy, our own AI tutor, included free with every learner. Ofsted Good. 100% levy-funded.
Every workforce starts somewhere on the AI adoption ladder. Our job is to find your rung, then build a programme that walks every learner up to the next. No team gets left at the bottom.
Your team uses AI tools personally but they haven't shown up in the day-to-day workflow.
Tools are deployed. A few power-users get value. Literacy is uneven.
Departments are rebuilding workflows around AI. Now the question is governance, risk and scale.
Your operating model is reshaped around agentic workflows.
Every programme below is delivered by TESS, live online, with monthly rolling starts and a dedicated skills coach per learner. 100% levy-funded.
Turn technical staff into AI-and-automation builders. Real workflows automated, real productivity unlocked.
Equip people managers to lead AI adoption and upskill their teams responsibly.
Operational leaders running AI-enabled change without the wheels coming off.
Coaches with the AI literacy to support modern leaders and workforces.
Engineer production-grade machine learning. Deep + generative AI for senior technical roles.
Where AI plays in your organisation. Build the value cases, set the ambition, align AI to strategy.
How to adopt AI responsibly. Frameworks, procurement and risk: the spine of a safe AI programme.
How to scale it. Workforce change, audit, monitoring and the comms that wrap real transformation.
First-line leaders who manage with data, not gut. CMI leadership plus the data craft to back it up.
Project managers certified to APM standard. Delivery confidence plus recognised credentials.
HR foundations done properly. CIPD pathway, modern people practice from day one.
Build your internal capability builders. Coaching, design and facilitation.
Senior HR partners shaping workforce strategy, not just policy.
L&D leaders aligning learning to business outcomes. Coaching practice baked in.
A data-literate operations layer covering Excel, SQL, Power BI and AI tools.
Turn data into decisions. Power BI and analytics craft for analysts and ambitious managers.
Business analysts who translate ambition into deliverable, commercial solutions.
Continuous improvement at the front line. Lean thinking, real results.
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt rigour for senior improvement leads.
Front-line digital support that solves problems and stays current with AI tooling.
An in-house content team that ships. Stories, social, SEO and analytics, owned not outsourced.
Marketers who run full campaigns end-to-end across every channel that matters.
The reliable engine room of a small business: admin, operations and comms, all of it.
Specialists who turn customer service into a competitive advantage.
Cultural-sector specialists building audience engagement programmes.
From the FTSE 100 to the NHS, hospitality to higher education. UK employers who chose TESS to lead AI literacy and AI adoption across their teams.
An accelerated, full AI & Automation Practitioner Level 4 apprenticeship, condensed from 15 months into 9 months. Copilot adoption, prompt engineering, agentic workflows, no-code automation and a real business automation project shipped by end of programme. BCS qualification by month 5. Rolling out across the Papa John's UK head office team.
TESS Group is an accredited centre for CMI, ILM and CIPD qualifications, from Level 3 to Level 7. Available as standalone professional development or embedded within apprenticeship programmes at no extra cost.
Half-day and full-day sessions. Bookable as standalone or bolt-on to any apprenticeship programme.
Coachy is our 24/7 AI tutor, built on Anthropic Claude and scoped to the entire TESS curriculum. Every learner gets him free: on web and mobile, from day one through to End-Point Assessment.
Knows which units you're on, which projects you've shipped, and what's coming next at EPA.
Your skills coach sees progress; your line manager doesn't see your conversations.
Mock professional discussions, rehearse difficult chats and stress-test ideas before you face them at work.
Built on Claude Sonnet 4.5, refined with cohort feedback every quarter.
We're not the cheapest. We're the one with the credentials that matter, the outcomes that prove it, and the AI tutor built in.
Independently verified on Trustpilot and Google. From L&D directors at FTSE 100s to apprentices on programme.
"My experience being great was definitely down to the trainer. He broke down the content so well despite it being so dense."
"Highly informative and well-structured. The trainer demonstrated excellent expertise and was consistently approachable."
"Neil has been an amazing tutor, really adaptable with the learning styles and very understanding."
"Excellent apprenticeship provider. The AI & Automation programme has transformed how our operations team works."
"Doesn't just teach AI, it transforms how our coaches think about their craft. The CMI L5 alone made it worthwhile."
"Really enjoyed the course. Very informative and well delivered."
"My experience being great was down to the trainer."
"Highly informative and well-structured. Excellent expertise."
"Our trainer was fantastic. Great knowledge, very supportive."
"Absolutely essential for the role. Helpful, supportive, helped everyone."
"Coachy is the unfair advantage. Like having a 24/7 supervisor."
"Took our team from copy-pasting prompts to shipping real automations in 4 months."
"The CMI L5 in the Coaching apprenticeship is the standout. Distinction passes."
"Levy fit-check on the first call. Zero hard sell. Refreshing."
"Our trainer was fantastic. Great knowledge."
"Absolutely essential. Helped everyone."
Honest answers to the questions every L&D lead, finance director and apprentice raises before they pick up the phone. Can’t find what you’re after? Ask us directly →
For levy-paying employers, the answer is nothing additional. The whole programme is drawn from your existing apprenticeship levy account. Non-levy SMEs contribute 5%, with the government covering the other 95%. Every TESS programme sits within published Skills England funding bands (£4,000 to £22,000).
Yes, and quickly. Unused levy expires after 12 months. We’ll map your remaining balance against the right TESS programmes on the discovery call. Levy paperwork takes 2-4 weeks, so the sooner the better.
The Growth & Skills Levy is the 2026 evolution of the apprenticeship levy. It opens up shorter, modular Level 5 units (like the three TESS AI Leadership Units) at £750 per learner per unit, with no End-Point Assessment and no apprenticeship commitment.
For new and developing managers, the strongest fit is AI & Automation Practitioner + CMI L3. It pairs people-management fundamentals with AI literacy, so your line managers leave the programme able to lead a team and automate the week-to-week. Senior operations leaders should look at the CMI L5 variant instead.
No. The L4 AI & Automation Practitioner is deliberately no-code. Learners work with Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Power Platform. Coding only appears in our L6 Machine Learning Engineer pathway (Python, MLOps), which is reserved for technical specialists.
Yes. For groups of 8+ learners we run closed bespoke cohorts, tailored to your sector, your projects and your tooling. Recent examples include Papa John’s 9-month accelerated AI cohort and Trinity College London’s AI Leadership Units.
Live online by default, nationwide. Workshops are bookable face-to-face or virtual. Every learner gets a named skills coach from day one through to End-Point Assessment, plus 24/7 access to Coachy, our AI tutor.
We run monthly rolling cohorts. From first discovery call to first learner on programme is typically 4 to 6 weeks, allowing time for funding paperwork. Existing levy employers can move faster.
Built into every TESS programme at no extra cost. Every enrolled learner gets a personal Coachy account on web, mobile and inside Microsoft Teams from day one. Built on Anthropic Claude (Sonnet 4.5), scoped to the TESS curriculum. Conversations stay private to the learner.
Yes, Ofsted Good and on the Skills England Approved Provider list (formerly RoATP). Chartered Partner status with CMI and BCS, NCFE-aligned. From 2026, Skills England approval will be mandatory to deliver levy-funded training. We already have it.
72% of TESS apprentices pass at distinction, against a UK average of 33%. Overall pass rate is 98%. Numbers are independently verified by our EPA partners and refreshed quarterly.
Every learner ships a real business automation or improvement project as part of their End-Point Assessment. We’ll work with you to define success metrics up front (time saved, cost avoided, output produced) and report against them every quarter throughout the programme.
Talk to one of our human advisors. 25 minutes. No deck, no pressure.
A 25-minute conversation. No deck, no hard sell. Just a clear view of which TESS programme suits your team, and whether your levy account will fund it.