The current reforms of apprenticeships represent significant change and successful roll-out involves meeting the needs of apprenticeship providers, assessment organisations, employers and individuals. Skills Federation, as a membership organisation of 19 employer led sector skills bodies, is uniquely placed to offer both insights into how the market is responding, and practical solutions via our ACE360 platform.
We recently undertook a market survey to better understand the views of apprenticeship providers and assessment organisations, to ask what their views were on the reforms, where they felt prepared (and where not) and what changes we needed to make to ACE360 to ensure a smooth transition.
The review, which involved a quantitative survey and in-depth interviews with apprenticeship providers and assessment organisations, confirmed that the apprenticeship landscape is facing significant transition. This is driven by numerous policy changes new assessment models, delegated responsibilities for training providers, and increased expectations around reporting and planning, quality assurance and data-led decision-making.
Apprenticeship providers and assessment organisations welcome the greater flexibility and autonomy to align assessments with employer and apprentice needs and believe the reforms could lead to higher and faster completions by creating simpler operational workflows.
However significant concerns were expressed about increasing complexity, and that reducing consistency and quality will damage the apprenticeship brand. Training providers and assessment organisations are worried that poor communication and unclear timelines risk employers disengaging.
Where apprenticeship providers and assessment organisations feel they are less well prepared are unsurprisingly those areas that are at an earlier stage of implementation. This includes new style assessment plans, delegated and on-programme assessments, and employer responsibility for assessing behaviours.
As a technology provider, we can have a positive impact on the success of the reforms, and our ACE360 Assessment Platform is undergoing significant development to ease the transition and support the new apprenticeship assessment models as efficiently as possible.
In response to the survey we are making changes to our ACE360 platform:
- Establishing two workflows in ACE360, one for legacy standards and one for the reformed assessment plans. They will work in very different ways.
- Reworking the ACE360 Standards database to capture knowledge, skills and behaviours, plus delivery / assessment options.
- Providing the ability for assessment organisations to choose their assessment strategy for each standard. These can be applied to knowledge, skills and behaviours.
- Developing new “Centre Management” tools that enables assessment organisations to manage on programme assessment by providers.
- Enhanced Internal Quality Assurance tools for assessment organisations covering their own assessment, and quality oversight of centres.
- New assessment tools for training providers to enable them to undertake on programme assessment.
- New dashboards and reporting tools to give ACE360 users effective oversight of assessment delivery.
Whilst the reforms are a significant change with risks, we continue to work hard to ensure our members, customers and stakeholders in the apprenticeship space continue to be supported and successful.
If you have similar ambitions for the future of apprenticeships, we would love to hear from you and discuss how we can best work together.
