From January 2026, the Level 7 Senior Leader apprenticeship will no longer be levy-funded for most managers.
Future Talent Learning Founder & CEO Jim Carrick-Birtwell shares insights from HR and L&D leaders about the forthcoming changes to the Level 7 Senior Leader Apprenticeship and the opportunities this creates for organisations looking to refresh their executive development programmes.
In recent weeks, I’ve been speaking to HR and L&D leaders about what this change means. The consistent question is clear: we still urgently need to invest in senior leadership, but what’s the best route now?
Here are the main options I’m hearing being considered:
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Traditional MBAs
Well-established and rigorous, MBAs can work well for a small number of leaders. But they are time-intensive (2–3 years) and costly to make sense as a scalable solution across wider leadership populations. -
Executive Coaching
Widely valued for the impact it can have on individuals at the top. Many senior leaders tell me their own coaching experiences have been pivotal. But organisations are finding it difficult to extend this more broadly — it’s expensive and resource-heavy, and doesn’t scale. -
Levy-funded alternatives
This is where the conversation gets interesting. A growing number of organisations are saying they want a credible, levy-funded replacement: something with the rigour of strategic, financial and governance content, but more applied and accessible than the old L7.
It was these kinds of conversations that inspired us at Future Talent Learning to (re)design the Transformational Leadership Programme (TLP) — a Mini-MBA style pathway built to fill this gap. It’s built on the foundations of our existing Level 5, diploma level levy programme but we’ve ‘souped it up’ with various new strategic additions.
Delivered in 14 months (a little longer than our normal L5 programme), the TLP blends:
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14 structured missions covering strategy, finance, governance and transformation
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Peer study groups to apply insights in practice with other senior leaders
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Touch points with coach every 10 days to embed progress
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Four dedicated executive one-to-one coaching sessions (these alone would normally cost around £2k per person)
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Ten masterclasses with global thought leaders (if you’ve been to our conferences or watched some big TED talks, you’ll know the calibre of speaker I’m thinking of)
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A realistic time commitment: c. 4 hours of blocked time per week, with the rest captured smartly through applied learning
And crucially: it’s 100% levy-funded because it still maps to our Level 5 programme.
From what I’m hearing, organisations don’t just want a like-for-like replacement for Level 7.
They want something better:
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More applied
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More efficient
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More accessible across a wider group of leaders
The end of Level 7 doesn’t have to be the end of serious executive development. It could be the opportunity to do it differently — and more effectively.
If you'd like to explore what this means for organisation find out more here or get in touch 👉 courses@futuretalentlearning.
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