inDEPTH
WHERE WILL ALL THE NEW APPRENTICESHIP ASSESSORS COME FROM?
End-point assessments are one of the most significant changes to apprenticeships in a generation, but what do they mean for trainers and assessors? Alan Thomson reports.
eforms to the apprenticeship system in England will see the existing apprenticeship frameworks, based on qualifications, replaced by programmes based on standards which set out the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) for specific occupations. The new, standards-based
apprenticeships focus on assessing whether, at the end of their time,
apprentices have the KSBs deemed necessary by employers to do their job competently. These are
12 ISSUE 34 • WINTER 2018 inTUITION
the end-point assessments (EPAs). Set out in assessment plans produced by employer groups known as trailblazers, EPAs are summative and graded. As such, they differ fundamentally from the continuous, formative assessments carried out in framework-based apprenticeships. EPAs must be carried out by trained assessors working for approved end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs). Both the end-point assessors and the EPAOs must be entirely independent of an apprentice’s employer or any training provider delivering on-programme aspects of the apprenticeships, such as maths and English to Level 2. So far fewer than 5,000 apprentices have been
through their EPAs. However, the expectation is that the numbers of apprentices reaching the EPA stage of their apprenticeship will explode over the next two years.
This rapid growth begs the question: where
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
