Regular progress reviews are vital for checking apprentices are on track with their learning and working successfully towards completion. However, great progress reviews are much more than a check-in and chase-up…
They can be fantastic motivational tools for apprentices, allowing them to take stock of their achievements, build confidence in their abilities and allow your tutors to stretch and challenge their learners – to aim for a higher grade at EPA.
They’re also a great way to engage the employer with off-the-job learning. Help them to see how the training relates to on-the-job work, solidify their commitment to the apprenticeship programme and encourage them to offer support and guidance that will give each apprentice the best chance of completion and improve their outcomes.
But the most important function of a progress review is to determine if the training, support, development and assessment are adding value to the learner and their role in employment. Spotting potential problems early is one of the many keys to success.
How do you engage the apprentice in progress reviews?
Understandably, many workplace trainers/assessors aim to give their learners a consistent individual progress review experience. They have a format they work through and conduct the one-to-one sessions in a friendly, supportive and business-like manner.
Unfortunately, too many progress reviews are about history, looking back at performance data to hold learners to account, or to congratulate learners on their achievements rather than inspiring, or looking ahead to future obstacles and the ways to overcome them.
Implementing a more forward-thinking progress review (that is much more than a list of ‘things to do’), will support engagement, build relationships and make you more likely to get to the bottom of any underlying issues, rather than just talking about symptoms, such as improving attendance or meeting deadlines.
Top progress tips
To consistently deliver great progress reviews that add value to the apprenticeship experience and support apprentices to achieve, is not easy and goes further than a tutor’s rapport with a learner. It takes a provider-led approach to really deliver results.
Take a look at some of our top tips for monitoring progress, to help you think through planning, the relationship to EPA, stretching and challenging through grading, and more:
- Know the required KSBs and look for ways to group them holistically for on-programme assessment, perhaps into learning targets or learning objectives.
- Identify how to frame the KSB as questions to be answered by apprentice activity – make all of the KSBs come to life in the workplace. Sometimes the more recent addition of ‘Duties’ into apprenticeship standards can help to achieve this aim.
- Identify the end-point assessment requirements and use them to introduce progress-led assessment as the programme moves forwards.
- Use grading judiciously to encourage progress and achievement, this can reward achievement and provide a baseline for mapping potential problems.
- Use a variety of assessments to triangulate achievement of any element
- Look for ways to grade assessments as a tool to demonstrate progress and achievement for external stakeholders
- Make sure the ILP is a live and regularly updated document
- Look for ways to quantify evidence in the absence of a qualification
- Use any on-programme guidance provided by end-point assessment organisations that you work with. This might include grading descriptors for individual KSBs
- Use the progress records as your key guide with the employer when agreeing that the apprentice is gateway-ready
Further support
As part of the Apprenticeship Workforce Development (AWD) programme, you can access this upcoming course on Improving apprenticeships using progress reviews. The AWD programme is fully funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and this course is free to attend.
The AWD programme supports staff at all levels and roles delivering apprenticeships across Further and Higher Education settings. A wide range of CPD is available for staff across your organisation, which has been specifically developed for apprenticeship providers, to help apprentices stay on programme and achieve their potential.
Improving apprenticeships using progress reviews – For Delivery staff
Review your approach to progress reviews and explore how to draw on the outcomes of initial assessment.
Join this AWD course to:
- Gain an understanding of the principles of effective progress reviews
- Explore examples of progress reviews from a range of industries
- Consider how to develop an efficient & effective process for planning objective-based reviews
- Investigate how progress reviews drive high achievement.
It is FREE to register and complete this course.
This course is delivered via live Zoom sessions. Places are limited, so please make sure you can attend before you enrol.
Funded by the Department for Education (DfE), the AWD programme is being delivered by the Education and Training Foundation in partnership with the Association of Colleges (AoC), Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), Strategic Development Network (SDN) and University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC).
