Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many apprenticeship starts there were on the Level 4 AI and Automation Practitioner standard in each quarter since its approval; and what proportion of starters were existing employees of the sponsoring employer.

The Level 4 Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation Practitioner standard was approved for delivery in December 2025.

Since then and up until April 2026, it is encouraging to see that there have been 500 starts on this standard. The quarterly breakdown (for the 2025/26 academic year to date) is shown in the table below.

86% of these starts were by apprentices who had been employed by their employer for more than 12 months prior to the start of the apprenticeship