Changes to fees and pricing for 2025-26

We aim to keep our prices as low as we can for as long as we can, but we’ve had to implement increases as a response to the current financial landscape.  

The current CPIH inflation rate is 4.1%, and we’ve ensured that all prices do not exceed 4%. The average centre administration fees increase is 3.9% while our average qualification price increases (excluding T Levels) is 3.5%. 

As an educational charity, all our profits are reinvested back into the sector – for example through our Assessment Innovation Fund (AIF), our investment in World Skills UK’s Centre of Excellence and more. We offer a lot of services, resources and support at no additional charge and we want to ensure we can still provide that quality for all.  

Awarding  

• Within awarding, we increased our approval, administration, assessment, post-results, and certification fees by an average price of 3.9%.   

• We increased our qualification fees, not including T Levels, on average by 3.5%.   

• You can find more information here on our fees for T Level Technical Qualifications.  

• To simplify our pricing structure when you book our remote EQA reviews, the half-day remote review fee is now 50% of the full-day remote rate.  

Awarding - late registration fees  

From 1 August 2024, we introduced a late registration fee for all of our qualifications (except Functional Skills and V Certs) to ensure we’re able to support learners at every stage of their journey and we have the appropriate resources in place to support you during busy assessment periods.   

For the products this applies to, if the learner is registered more than 90 days after their start date, a 10% late fee will be applied (which is 10% of the applicable registration and certification fee). This fee applies to any new learner registrations with a learner start date of 1 August 2024 onwards.  

From 1 August 2025, we introduced a new V Cert late, and very late registration fee for registrations made past 31 January 2026. This will help us to ensure we have the resource to quality assure your learners’ work in a timely manner.  

Please note that for T Level qualifications, late and very late registration fees already were in place and are calculated differently. Please see our 2024-25 fees and pricing document for more information.  

Read more information on learner start dates and later registration fees on our fees webpage.  

End-point assessment  

We communicated changes to our end-point assessment fees in our May 2025 newsletter.  

We froze our fees for our EPA services for the 2025-26 academic year across all standards, except for the Healthcare Support Worker and Senior Healthcare Support Worker standards, where we applied a price increase to all apprentices that successfully pass through Gateway on or after 1 August 2025.  
   
This decision reflects our ongoing commitment to providing consistent, high-quality assessment services while supporting our customers through a time of change in the sector. We understand that the landscape of apprenticeships is continually evolving, and we're closely monitoring developments. Please be assured that we'll review our position on fees as more information becomes available and any changes in the sector are confirmed.  

Skills assessment tools and resources  

For our skills assessment tools and resources, we applied a 4% increase to prices at the point of renewal throughout 2025-26.  

The learner start date is the date on which learning for the qualification began (accurate to within a week). For schools and colleges, this would typically be the first day of learning at the beginning of term in September. For private training providers, this could be at any time during the year. Please note that this differs from the registration date, which is the date when the centre makes the learner registration with NCFE on the Portal. 

You can find information on how to add learner start dates to the Portal in the registration section of our Portal User Guide.

You can amend this via the ‘my learners’ area of the Portal.   If you have any questions about learner start dates, please get in touch with our Customer Support team.

In recent years we’ve received a significant number of new learner registrations during the busy summer months, often large cohorts of learners are registered and certificated on the same day. To ensure we can best support you during these periods of high demand, we’re applying a late registration fee to the majority of our qualifications, as registering learners later in the year doesn’t enable us to plan effectively for the resources needed during busy times. 

We’ve introduced a new mandatory field for all learner registrations in the Portal, learner start date. This is required for all learner registrations going forward. A late registration fee will be applied if you register a learner more than 90 days after the learner start date. For example, if you register a learner on 1 December 2025, but the learner start date is 1 August 2025, the late registration fee would apply as they’ve been registered with us more than 90 days after the learner started on the qualification.

The learner start date is the date on which learning for the qualification began (accurate to within a week). For schools and colleges, this would typically be the first day of learning at the beginning of term in September. For private training providers, this could be at any time during the year. Please note that this differs from the registration date, which is the date when the centre makes the learner registration with NCFE on the Portal.    

For all qualifications except for Functional Skills, we’ll apply 10% of the registration fee for the product the learner is being registered on as a late registration fee. This is charged per learner for every learner that is registered late.   

The late registration charge is applicable to all of our qualifications (with the exception of Functional Skills. Please note that late registration fees for V Certs and T Levels are calculated differently).