Allied Health Professions

Apprenticeship standard · ST0633

Arts therapist degree apprenticeship

The arts therapist apprenticeship is a level 7 (master’s degree) standard, reference ST0633. It typically takes 2 years. The funding band pays up to £19,000 towards the training, and your employer — not you — meets it. Finish it and you hold HCPC registration as an art therapist/art psychotherapist, dramatherapist or music therapist, depending on the pathway taken.

Level 7
7 Level Equivalent to a master’s degree
2 years Typical duration Stated by the standard; employers vary this in practice
£19,000 Funding band maximum Towards training costs, paid by the employer — not a salary
Not published Apprentices started Starts are not broken down to this standard in the published figures

What this route actually is

You apply for a job, not for a course. A trust advertises an apprentice post, recruits you into it, and then enrols you on an approved degree with a university it has a contract with. From that day you are staff: on the payroll, in the rota, with annual leave, a pension and a line manager. Study is protected time carved out of your working week, and the rest of the week you are working — first in support roles, then, as your competence grows, in supervised practice towards the same standards a full-time student meets on placement.

This standard runs for about 2 years, with the academic content spread across your working week rather than taken full time. The £19,000 funding maximum is what the government funding band will pay the training provider. It never reaches your bank account, and it is not a measure of what you will earn. Levy-paying employers — which is every NHS trust of any size — draw the training cost from the levy account they already pay into; smaller employers pay a share and government covers the remainder. Your salary is a separate matter entirely, set by the band the post was advertised at.

At the end you are registrable on identical terms to a full-time graduate. This standard leads to HCPC registration as an art therapist/art psychotherapist, dramatherapist or music therapist, depending on the pathway taken. There is no separate class of registration for people who came in this way, no note on the register, and no ceiling on where you can go afterwards. Employers who recruit newly qualified staff generally value the route, because an apprentice arrives already knowing how an NHS service runs.

Reference number
ST0633
Level
7 (master’s degree)
Status
Approved and open to starts
Typical duration
2 years
Maximum funding
£19,000
Leads to
HCPC registration as an art therapist/art psychotherapist, dramatherapist or music therapist, depending on the pathway taken

Entry requirements

Applicants must already be proficient in art, drama or music - typically holding a degree in the discipline or demonstrating experiential equivalence - and must meet HCPC English language requirements (equivalent to IELTS level 7 overall, with no element below 6.5) before entering the degree programme.

Two filters sit in front of you and they work in that order. The employer decides whether to shortlist you at all — and here relevant experience, usually as a support worker or assistant practitioner in the same service, counts for a great deal more than it would on a UCAS form. The university then confirms you meet its academic entry criteria for the degree. People who have been out of education for years, and who would find a straight application to a three-year degree daunting, often get in this way.

If you want the full-time entry requirements to compare against, the course pages for art therapist, dramatherapist and music therapist list the typical offer each university asks for: see the course finder.

How you are assessed

Fully integrated degree apprenticeship (statutory integration): the regulator-approved degree is the end-point assessment, so there is no separate EPA period after the qualification. Both the training provider and the end-point assessment organisation must be approved by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), and external quality assurance is carried out by the Office for Students.

What that means day to day is that you are being judged on two tracks at once. The academic one is the degree — assignments, exams, a dissertation or major project depending on the programme. The practice one is competence in the workplace, signed off by practice educators against the regulator’s standards of proficiency. Falling behind on either is what ends an apprenticeship, and the most common cause is not the academic work but the collision between shift patterns, study days and life outside work.

Providers delivering this standard

What you give up to take it

You need an employer first

There is no clearing round and no central application. If no trust within travelling distance advertises an apprentice post this year, the route is shut to you this year — however strong your application would have been.

There are very few places

A trust typically takes a small handful of apprentices a year, often reserved for staff it already employs, against a full-time cohort many times larger.

You are tied to one geography

Your contract, your university place and your practice hours all sit with one employer. Moving away mid-programme usually means starting again somewhere else, and many posts carry an expectation that you stay on after you qualify.

It is hard, sustained work

2 years of full-time employment with a degree on top. There is no long summer vacation, and study time competes with the service’s rota.

The money, honestly compared

The apprenticeship’s financial case is that you earn while you train and take on no tuition debt. The university route’s case is that it is shorter, far more widely available, and carries its own support — student finance, and for several allied health courses in England a non-repayable NHS grant on top of it. The schemes that would apply to you on the full-time route are Postgraduate Master's Loan (England); see funding and bursaries for what each one pays and who qualifies.

Whichever way you come in, the destination is the same pay scale: a newly qualified art therapist starts on band 6, worth £39,959 in England on the 2026/27 scale before any high cost area supplement. See art therapist pay for the full ladder.

Where this standard takes you

Art therapist

Art therapists use drawing, painting, sculpture and other visual media as the main means of communication in a therapeutic relationship. Rather than teaching art, they help people explore feelings that are hard to put into words, working towards agreed aims over a series of individual or group sessions. Day to day this means assessing referrals, setting up a consistent studio space, holding difficult material safely, keeping clinical records, attending clinical supervision and feeding back to multidisciplinary teams.

11 approved coursesStarts at band 6

Dramatherapist

Dramatherapists use role play, storytelling, movement, puppetry, improvisation and script work as the main therapeutic medium. They create a safe, structured space where people can rehearse difficult situations, express feelings at one remove through character and metaphor, and build confidence in relating to others. A typical week involves assessing referrals, planning and running individual and group sessions, adapting material for different ages and abilities, writing clinical notes, taking supervision and liaising with teachers and clinical colleagues.

5 approved coursesStarts at band 6

Music therapist

Music therapists use improvisation, songwriting, listening and shared music-making as the main means of communication with people who find talking difficult or impossible. No musical skill is needed from the person attending. Sessions are planned around agreed clinical aims and may be one to one or in groups. Alongside direct work, music therapists assess referrals, choose and maintain instruments, record and review sessions, keep clinical notes, take supervision, and coach families, teachers and ward staff in using music between sessions.

8 approved coursesStarts at band 6

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Other allied health standards

Where this page’s data comes from

Level, reference number, duration and funding band are taken from the published apprenticeship standard ST0633; course counts come from the regulator’s approved-programme register, and the salary figure from the Agenda for Change pay circular. Standards are revised and funding bands reviewed, so check the register before relying on a figure.