Four Questions to Ask Providers to Ensure Your Levy Spend for Apprenticeships is Value Driven

Now that Apprenticeships are embedded and more widely known, it is important for organisations to be savvy about their levy spend to ensure it delivers value to the business.

From an employer’s perspective, it can be challenging to know where to start in getting a successful Apprenticeship programme off the ground.  There are a lot of providers on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers who have proven their credibility to be on the register; however, finding the right fit between employer and provider is important given that the partnership will often span 12-24 months.  To help ensure that your levy spend delivers value, here are four important questions to ask a potential partner:

• How will you plan for/quantify the 20% off the job element of apprenticeship training to ensure that individual and organisational needs are met?

The requirement to conduct 20% off the job training is an important element of Apprenticeships.  Learning must be structured, aligned to identified needs and expectations, output focused and quantified to demonstrate how the 20% requirement will be met.

• What opportunities exist to deliver business impact within the programme?

 The Programme Plan for any Apprenticeship will create lots of opportunities for skills application throughout the duration.  Careful design of training content, tasks and activities should influence business impact and consider qualitative evidence that learners can produce to validate their personal contribution to their work area.

•  How will you review and report on learner progress and evaluate impact?

It is important to establish what mechanisms/processes are in place to review, evaluate and report on learner progress to ensure that all parties are kept informed and opportunities for improvement enabled throughout the programme.

• How will you prepare Apprentices for end point assessment (EPA)?

 Given the independent nature of end point assessment and the comprehensive assessment plans under-pinning each Standard, it is important to explore how the programme will incorporate preparation for end point assessment to ensure that this is not an afterthought.  In our experience, EPA should be integrated into all Apprenticeship programmes from day one.

Adalta are an experienced approved Apprenticeship provider specialising in management Apprenticeships and recognised by the CMI as short-listed National Provider of the Year 2021.   To view our programmes, please visit click here

To speak to an Apprenticeship Programme Consultant, please contact [email protected] or ring 0345 021 2356.