


Accreditation explained

Accreditation
explained
What is the Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation and how will it help you to make the best choice regarding which company to pursue an Engineering Apprenticeship at?
The Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation was launched by Next Gen Makers in partnership with the national Manufacturers organisation Make UK.
The purpose of the Accreditation is to recognise the best companies for Engineering and Manufacturing Apprenticeships in your region, the kind of companies that go the extra mile in creating a great experience for their Apprentices and offer the right kind of training, development opportunities and support during and after their Apprenticeships.
By having a Directory of these companies on this website, the aim is to make it easier for you to find the right kind of company for you to pursue an Engineering Apprenticeship with.
How do companies get the Accreditation?
Companies undergo a 12-month accreditation process and are annually re-accredited to keep the Accreditation.
The Accreditation process consists of two components:

A satisfaction survey completed by the company’s current Engineering Apprentices – to get their feedback on what it is like being an Apprentice at the company

The company itself committing to benchmark their Apprenticeship scheme against industry best in class standards – and to work to demonstrate these standards themselves
What do the ‘Accreditation level’ logos mean?
There are two levels of the Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation that a company can achieve. The first is the Gold standard ‘Excellent Employer’ status and the second is the Silver ‘Aspiring for Excellence’ status. Both recognise that the company has successfully been through a rigorous accreditation process for their Apprenticeship scheme.


What decides which company gets which Accreditation level?
Each of the three components of the annual Accreditation process have a score attributed to them:
As you would expect from a Accreditation like this, the most influential component on determining the overall score achieved by a company is the Apprentice survey. This means that the experiences and feedback of existing Engineering Apprentices is the most important factor.

To score Gold, a company needs 90 to 100 points out of all three accreditation components. Silver is 80 to 89.9 points and any less than 79.9 means no Accreditation and they will not feature in this online Directory.
What does ‘Benchmarking’ mean?
The Kitemark accreditation process is administered by Next Gen Makers and is part of the Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme – which companies join to benchmark their Apprenticeship schemes against best-in-class standards, learn from the successes of other companies and commit to creating the best Apprenticeships scheme that they can.
You may notice that some companies in this Directory have a ‘Benchmarking’ logo next to them. This means that they are involved in the Best Practice Programme, are benchmarking their Apprenticeship scheme and are committed to creating the best Apprenticeship scheme that they can before they then choose to pursue Accreditation.