Health and science: 23 standards updated as regulators rewrite their frameworks
When a professional regulator moves, every apprenticeship mapped to it has to move with it.
Health and science carries more recorded changes than any other route: 23 standards, most of them clustered in March 2026. The pattern is unusual because the driver is regulatory rather than financial.
The dental group moved as one. Dental Nurse at Level 3, Dental Technician at Level 5, Clinical Dental Technician at Level 5 and Orthodontic Therapist at Level 4 all retired their General Dental Council 2023 versions and replaced them with version 2.0. Dental Hygienist at Level 6 also moved to 2.0 and is currently awaiting an assessment organisation.
The nursing and midwifery group followed the same logic against Nursing and Midwifery Council standards. Midwife moved to version 2.0, as did Community Nurse Specialist Practitioner and Specialist Community Public Health Nurse, both at Level 7 against the NMC 2022 standards. Doctor at Level 7, Orthoptist at Level 6, Dispensing Optician at Level 6 and Osteopath at Level 6 all moved to 2.0 in the same window. Biomedical Scientist at Level 6 moved earlier, in August 2025.
What it changed from: each of these sat on a version mapped to an earlier iteration of its regulator's framework. Where a regulator updates the competences required for registration, the apprenticeship has to be remapped or it stops producing registrable practitioners.
What follows: this is not optional catch-up. Delivering against a retired version risks apprentices completing without meeting current registration requirements. Confirm which version each cohort sits on, and where a regulator's own consultation is still open, expect another revision behind this one.
Every changed standard on this route, 48
Kept current from the register, so it reflects today rather than when this was written.