Medr publishes the programme specification and grant commissioning documentation in September 2026 — the document that invites providers to bid for funding under the new Apprenticeship Programme for Wales. The programme itself starts on 1 August 2027. Both dates are in Medr's own published timetable (Medr/2026/08).
If you deliver apprenticeships, employability provision or work-based learning in Wales, that is the paperwork your next four years sits on. It is worth knowing what the consultation actually said before it lands.
What came out of the consultation
Medr ran a six-week consultation in September and October 2025. Over 350 people took part. The summary was published on 17 February 2026, with the detailed analysis by Beaufort Research at Annex A.
Two changes matter most for planning:
- Frameworks go from 23 to 18. Health, social and child care are grouped; engineering and manufacturing are split. Net zero, digital and AI content sits inside every framework rather than in separate ones. A new framework library launches in August 2027.
- Outcomes get wider. Respondents supported moving to a more outcome-based funding model, and a more holistic measure of success: completion, timely completion, sustained employment, progression, learner and employer satisfaction, competency attainment, readiness for work and economic impact.
Medr also intends to consult on tertiary performance indicators in Autumn 2026.
The awkward half of that outcomes list
Completion, timely completion and sustained employment come out of systems you already run. Readiness for work, competency attainment and learner satisfaction mostly live in a tutor's head and in the corridor conversation after a session.
The consultation leaned hard on exactly those. Pastoral care, mentoring, confidence-building and softer transferable skills — communication, teamwork, problem solving, digital literacy, leadership, wellbeing — run through the learner support section as a core benefit, not a nice-to-have.
Providers have flagged the risk. The National Training Federation for Wales said its submission raised concerns around system complexity, transparency and outcome-based funding, and the operational impact of the changes. A measure you cannot evidence at cohort level is a measure that costs you money.
What to start recording now
You cannot reconstruct a learner's starting confidence in autumn 2027. You can capture it this term, in the room, in about a minute.
A distance-travelled capture is simple: the same short scale at the start of a programme and at the end. Confidence in, confidence out. Anonymous, so there is no personal data question and no consent bottleneck. What you get back is a movement — 3 to 7 across twelve weeks — for a cohort, not a claim you have to defend from memory.
Do that from September and you go into the bid with a year of your own outcome data instead of a promise about what you will collect later. Add recognised proxy values and the same activity produces a costed social value figure for your funder and your annual report.
One thing worth saying plainly to anyone working off grants: Owl Impact can be built into your funding bid as the monitoring and evaluation line — the evidence layer your funder already expects — so it's covered by the grant, not your own budget.
Start the record before the specification lands
Log a session now and see your social value in pounds — two minutes, and the report is emailed to you.
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Meet-the-buyer dates and social value changes in Welsh procurement — short, useful, no spam.