Improvement Specialist.
The Level 5 apprenticeship for people who fix how work gets done.

The Level 5 Improvement Specialist standard is written at Lean Six Sigma Black Belt level: Skills England lists Lean Six Sigma Black Belt among the job titles for the occupation, and the curriculum covers the full Black Belt toolkit, DMAIC end to end, Design of Experiments, Measurement System Analysis, hypothesis testing, regression and Statistical Process Control, worked in Minitab. The qualification the learner earns is the Level 5 apprenticeship itself, graded Fail, Pass, Merit or Distinction at independent end-point assessment.

The standard’s typical entry point is a Level 4 improvement qualification or equivalent experience. We check this at the skills scan before enrolment, so a learner who has run improvement projects without a formal Green Belt can still be a good fit. The Level 4 Improvement Practitioner (the Green Belt-level standard) is closing to new starts, which makes the Level 5 the funded route for people ready to lead improvement rather than practise it.

The ST0555 apprenticeship sits in the £9,000 funding band. Levy-paying employers fund it from their existing levy. Non-levy employers pay nothing for apprentices aged 16 to 24 and a 5% co-investment (£450 across the whole programme) for apprentices aged 25 and over, with the government funding the rest. The apprentice never pays. The CMI Level 5 Award and the leadership workshops are a TESS extra at no extra cost; they sit outside the funded apprenticeship.

It is a CMI Level 5 Award in Management & Leadership, a chartered-body credential that is portable and stays on the CV. TESS includes it, and eight leadership workshops, alongside the apprenticeship at no extra cost. It is not part of the funded apprenticeship: the training plan, off-the-job hours and end-point assessment are all against the ST0555 standard, and the CMI assignment (Unit 514, Managing Change) is delivered separately and assessed by CMI.

14 months on programme, with the end-point assessment in the final months. Delivery is one live online workshop a month, in the diary from the day the learner says yes, plus the improvement project they run in their own role. Skills England sets a minimum of 370 off-the-job training hours for this standard across the whole programme; that is a total, not a fixed share of the week, and most of it is the live project work.

Yes. Most Improvement Specialist apprentices are existing employees being upskilled: operations managers, quality leads, project managers and improvement leads. There is no requirement to hire new staff. Any employee who will develop substantial new skills through the programme is eligible, and the apprenticeship levy can fund it.

The EPA follows the ST0555 assessment plan and has two independently assessed methods, completed within 20 weeks of gateway: a professional discussion of two hours to two hours twenty minutes, underpinned by the portfolio (which includes a recorded 35 to 40 minute training session the learner designs and delivers, with Level 4 learning outcomes), and a four-hour open-book examination of eight mini case studies, ten multiple-choice questions each, worked in Minitab or Excel on sampling, measurement systems, capability, hypothesis testing, regression and statistical process control. Each method is graded Fail, Pass, Merit or Distinction.

Live online, via Microsoft Teams or Zoom, nationwide across England: no travel, no venue costs. Private cohorts run for six or more learners from one organisation and can include face-to-face sessions on request. Ask us for the next start date.