A BBL apprentice is not an intern, and that is the expensive mistake
The Dutch hairdressing trade has been complaining about the shortage of good staff for years. Training your own is the only route that structurally does anything about it, and it is the route least taken because nobody is quite sure how it works.
Start here, because this is what goes wrong most often. An apprentice on the beroepsbegeleidende leerweg, the BBL, joins you on an ordinary employment contract and receives wages. Not a placement stipend, not an expense allowance, not a figure the two of you find reasonable.
The practical training agreement you sign with the apprentice and the school comes on top of that. It governs the educational side: what gets learned, how many hours and who supervises. It does not replace the employment contract.
That difference runs through everything. Payroll taxes, holiday pay, pension accrual from age 18, sick pay, dismissal protection and health and safety duties. A BBL apprentice counts as an employee, including for your RI&E.
If what you are looking for is which training routes exist for a learner and what they cost, that sits in the guide on training routes for Dutch salon professions. This guide stands on the other side: you are the employer offering the place.
Applying for SBB recognition
You may not train an mbo student without accreditation as a leerbedrijf. That recognition comes from SBB, not from the school the apprentice is enrolled at.
The route is short. You run a quickscan first, choose the vmbo or mbo qualifications you want to train for, submit the application online, and then a practical learning adviser contacts you to go through it.
SBB decides no later than ten working days after the date of the request. That is in article 6(1) of the Regeling erkenning leerbedrijven SBB. Mind the version: the regulation of 12 November 2025 was withdrawn on 1 August 2026 and replaced by a new one, adopted on 26 June 2026 and published in Staatscourant 2026, 25521. The articles on the application, the conditions and the decision period are unchanged in substance; the update sits in the sector annex.
Those ten working days are not a hard guarantee. The same paragraph allows the deadline to be exceeded in exceptional cases, provided SBB gives reasons in the decision, and paragraph 4 gives SBB up to 20 working days from the date of the request to notify you in writing. In practice allow a few weeks between your first click and an apprentice behind the chair, because there is also a conversation and an academic year involved.
Two practical points. Recognition is tied to the qualification, so you need it for exactly the course the apprentice is taking. If you later want to train a barber or a beauty specialist as well, you extend the recognition. For elective modules that is not needed: an apprentice can do those at any recognised company, in consultation with the school.
Recognition is not permanent. A recognised training company is reassessed against the conditions once every four years, per article 7(1) of the same regulation. Where circumstances warrant, it can be more often.
The adviser can also withdraw recognition. The grounds are in article 8(1): you no longer meet the conditions, there are circumstances harming the apprentice such as harassment, discrimination, violence or unsafe conditions, or there are serious circumstances such as bankruptcy or enforcement action by a regulator.
The requirements on you and on your practical trainer in the Netherlands
The conditions for recognition are in article 5 of the regulation, and there are five. Good and safe are two separate criteria there, and they often get summarised into one.
A good learning place. The apprentice has to encounter the work processes and the handling of the occupation they are training for. A salon where someone spends six months only washing and sweeping does not meet this.
A learning place in socially safe conditions. This is a criterion in its own right, not a sub-clause of the previous one. It ties to the withdrawal grounds in article 8: intimidation, discrimination, violence or unsafe conditions cost you the recognition.
Sufficient and expert supervision. This is the core, and it is more work than people expect. Someone has to have time to explain, to watch and to assess.
Cooperation with the school and SBB. Progress conversations, assessment moments, contact with the school's practical trainer.
Public registration. Your company details go into the public register of recognised training companies, with limited exceptions on safety grounds. That is also a recruitment advantage: apprentices looking for a place look there.
The requirement on the practical trainer is where small salons come unstuck. That person must demonstrably have, through a diploma, a certificate or experience, expertise at least at the level of the qualification the apprentice is taking. The training company appoints them and facilitates them, says article 5(3).
Demonstrably at least at the same level means in practice: for an apprentice on level 3 you need someone at level 3 or above. That may be you. Facilitating means there is genuine time for it, not that it has to happen between two clients.
What an apprentice costs
Now the arithmetic, because this is the question that actually gets asked.
Take an 18-year-old BBL apprentice working four days a week in the salon, so 32 hours, with one day at school. The statutory minimum youth wage at 18 is 7.36 EUR an hour from 1 January 2026 and 7.50 EUR from 1 July 2026, per rijksoverheid.nl.
Note that this is the legal floor, not automatically the figure you are allowed to pay. The hairdressing CAO has been declared universally binding, so it applies to non-members too, and it has its own apprentice scale. Lay the current pay table alongside before you agree a figure. The worked example below uses the legal floor so you can see where the lower bound sits.
32 hours a week times 52 weeks is 1,664 paid hours. At 7.36 EUR that is 12,247 EUR of gross pay a year. Add 8 percent holiday pay, 980 EUR, which brings the wage base to 13,227 EUR.
The employer contributions run over that base: low Awf 2.74 percent, low Aof 6.27 percent, Wko surcharge 0.50 percent, Whk 1.52 percent and the employer Zvw levy 6.10 percent. Together 17.13 percent, or 2,266 EUR.
Then comes pension, the line that apprentice calculations almost always leave out. Since 1 January 2024 membership of the Pensioenfonds Kappersbedrijf starts at 18 rather than 21, and a BBL apprentice is a member because they hold an ordinary employment contract. A BOL work placement student is not. The employer share is 6.95 percent and the fund has no franchise deduction, so the contribution runs on the full wage base: 919 EUR. Source: pensioenkappers.nl, checked September 2026.
| Component | Amount | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Gross hourly wage, age 18 | 7.36 EUR | Statutory minimum youth wage from 1 January 2026 |
| Paid hours per year | 1,664 | 32 hours a week times 52 weeks |
| Gross pay per year | 12,247 EUR | 1,664 times 7.36 EUR |
| Holiday pay 8 percent | 980 EUR | Wage base becomes 13,227 EUR |
| Employer contributions 17.13 percent | 2,266 EUR | Low Awf, low Aof, Wko, Whk, Zvw |
| Employer pension share 6.95 percent | 919 EUR | From age 18, no franchise deduction |
| Total wage cost per year | 16,412 EUR | 9.86 EUR per paid hour |
| After a 2,800 EUR subsidy | 13,612 EUR | 8.18 EUR per paid hour |
Watch your apprentice's age. This build-up applies from 18. If your apprentice is still 16 or 17 the pension line drops out for now and the wage cost is lower, but from their birthday that 6.95 percent counts in full. Budget for it on a two-year route. The O&O contribution to the Sociaal Fonds Kappers comes on top as well: 0.6 percent of payroll in 2026, unchanged from 2025, of which you may deduct at most half from the wage. That one does run on a BBL apprentice's wage at any age. Source: sociaalfondskappers.nl, checked September 2026.
The praktijkleren subsidy: amount, conditions and deadline
RVO's Subsidieregeling praktijkleren reimburses part of your supervision costs. The maximum is 2,800 EUR per realised placement per academic year.
Two things go wrong often. Within mbo the subsidy applies only to the bbl. Bol students and the third learning route do not count. And you apply afterwards, once the academic year has ended, not in advance.
The deadline is the same every year. Article 17 of the Subsidieregeling praktijkleren sets it at 17:00 on 17 September following the academic year concerned. RVO normally opens the window in early June, so you have a good three months. If you supervised a BBL apprentice, put that 17 September in your diary at the start of the placement rather than in the summer afterwards.
| Condition | What is actually required |
|---|---|
| Learning route | Only mbo-bbl, so not bol and not the third route |
| Recognition | Recognised training company for that qualification during the supervision |
| Practical training agreement | Signed by apprentice, school and training company, with start and end dates |
| Hours | At least 610 clock hours of workplace learning per year, school at least 200 supervised teaching hours |
| Records | Attendance records plus evidence of supervision, 40 supervision weeks for the full amount |
The amount is a maximum and not an entitlement. If the budget within an education category is oversubscribed, RVO divides it proportionally across all applications submitted in that category. So do not budget 2,800 EUR, budget below it. Source: rvo.nl, checked September 2026.
The record keeping is where applications fail. Weeks in which the apprentice was entirely absent through illness or holiday do not count, and you have to be able to show that. Keep an attendance record from day one, daily or weekly, plus notes of the supervision moments. Reconstructing it afterwards does not work.
The payback period, honestly calculated
An apprentice is an investment, not cheap labour. That sentence rarely appears in trade body recruitment material, and it is the one you need to hear up front.
In year one the sums are negative. The apprentice is at school one day a week, works more slowly, and your practical trainer spends part of their time watching rather than cutting. Budget conservatively with an occupancy rate of 40 to 50 percent in the first year, and with supervision time you give up out of your own revenue.
From the second year it tips. The apprentice works more independently, supervision gets lighter, and the hourly wage rises with the age scale but stays well below that of a qualified professional. That is precisely the phase in which the investment repays.
And that is where the risk sits. An apprentice who leaves after qualifying takes your whole investment with them. Think ahead of the second year about what you offer to keep someone: a contract with prospects, more hours, a specialism of their own. Think as well about what happens if they leave and take clients, which is covered in the guide on an employee who leaves.
The honest conclusion: train someone if you structurally need staff and are prepared to be in it for two years. Do not train someone because an apprentice is cheaper per hour than a hairdresser.
The four steps before you begin
Step 1: check that you have a practical trainer. Someone with demonstrable expertise at least at the level of the qualification, and with genuine time. Without that person the rest is pointless.
Step 2: run the SBB quickscan and submit your application. Expect a decision within ten working days, with written confirmation allowed to run to 20, and a conversation with an adviser.
Step 3: contact one or two mbo institutions in your region. They match apprentices to recognised training companies, and the academic year sets the pace.
Step 4: set up your records before the apprentice starts. Employment contract, practical training agreement, attendance record and a place to note supervision moments. If you supervised someone in the past academic year, submit your subsidy application before 17 September at 17:00.
For the daily side CelerBook helps. You add your apprentice as their own staff member in the diary, with their own working hours and the school day blocked out, and you set a different duration and a different price per staff member for the same treatment. So an apprentice gets 60 minutes for a cut where an experienced hairdresser gets 40, and clients booking online land on realistic slots. The client page keeps visit history, so after six months you can see whether your apprentice's clients come back. Confirmations go out by email. The first 5 appointments each month are free, then 0.25 EUR excluding VAT per completed appointment, capped at 30 EUR a month for a solo operator plus 5 EUR per additional active staff member. Try CelerBook for free.