We’re on the home straight. The Christmas break is nearly upon us and we’ll soon be ringing in the new year (and a new decade!)
We’ve had the pleasure of supporting thousands of apprenticeship practitioners again this year in their delivery of standards – through webinars, workshops and our Digest. If that’s you, we’ve really appreciated your support and interest.
As a thank you, we wanted to share two free CPD webinars with you, to help shape your thinking and preparation for 2020.
They’re drawn from two hot topics that we know many apprenticeship staff have been grappling with over this last year – initial assessment and end-point assessment.
Initial assessment
Getting initial assessment right for apprenticeship standards is vital, and underpins the quality and effectiveness of your provision. This year, both Ofsted and the ESFA have been looking at this closely.
Although providers are having to look carefully at how they account for Recognition of Prior Learning, initial assessment is no longer just about compliance. In the world of apprenticeship standards, it needs to be central to the way you develop the curriculum and training plan for each apprentice.
In this free webinar recording, SDN’s David Lockhart-Hawkins gives an overview of how the initial assessment needs to focus on compliance and quality, and how the two are linked:
You can find details of our in-depth 5-part webinar series on getting initial assessment for standards in our webinar library, below.
End-point assessment
For many, 2019 has been the year where your first cohorts have started to go through end-point assessment. It is often different and high-stakes. Making sure your apprentices are fully prepared, is a vital part of part of the training programme and fundamental to the apprentice’s success.
It can be a challenge – at what point might you start to prepare the apprentice? How do you set up robust on-programme assessments that mirrors what the apprentice will face at the end-point? At what point might you introduce the concept of grading, or start to discuss the gateway process with the employer?
These are all questions we’ve been helping providers to understand and work through this year. A useful place to start however, is to step back and understand what end-point assessment methods feature in assessment plans, how are they used and what they assess.
This was the topic of a free webinar we hosted earlier this year, where Chris Cherry (SDN’s assessment lead) also gave some clarity around the use of portfolios, interviews and projects. Here is the recording:
You can find details of our in-depth 5-part webinar series on preparation for end-point assessment in our webinar library, below.
Have you checked out our CPD webinar library?
The SDN webinar library is full of recorded webinars that are practical and affordable and give you the insight, tools and actions you need to adapt and improve your apprenticeship provision – visit the webinar library for details.