Teresa Frith is Senior Project Lead for Apprenticeship Workforce Development (AWD) for the Association of Colleges (AoC). She has been involved in the AWD programme since its inception and believes in the importance of the programme to help providers who are struggling with the demands of apprenticeships to gain not only CPD but support to help them improve.
How is AoC involved in managing the AWD programme?
AoC is one of five membership organisations belonging to the AWD consortium alongside ETF. The programme is funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and ETF is the contract holder but it’s a true consortium. Other members include the University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC), the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), the Strategic Development Network (SDN) and the evaluator, SQW. The consortium represents all types of apprenticeship providers and has brought different perspectives to the design and management of the programme.
What have been the successes so far?
Well, it’s early days as we only started delivery in earnest at the end of 2023. Prior to that a lot of time was spent on collating and reviewing data, training needs analysis and course design. We’re running some standard courses in house where there might be a team of people involved in different aspects such as onboarding and initial assessment, for example, so it makes sense to deliver to the whole team – that’s proving successful. The Apprenticeship Action Groups also look productive.
What is an Apprenticeship Action Group?
Let’s say I do the Initial Assessment training within the AWD programme, I can now join an Apprenticeship Action Group (AAG) for initial assessment by way of follow up. In that group there will be leaders, managers, delivery staff and support staff, and we’re all being supported by a facilitator mentor who is helping us to develop an action plan for our organisations. This enables me to translate all the enthusiasm, motivation and confidence that I built during the training course into an action plan that I can implement in my organisation. Then I’m going to be supported by the AAG as I implement the plan, dealing with all the issues that arise, and eventually I’m going to be supported in evaluating its success or otherwise and deciding what other steps I need to take to improve. The idea is not to lose the momentum of having done the training, which as we all know, so often happens.
Why does the AWD programme matter?
Some learners and some employers are currently not getting the appropriate level of provision that they should be getting, and really there’s no way for them to know until they’ve signed the contracts. If you’ve got the right learner with the right employer on the right apprenticeship with the right provider the number of problems you’re going to hit down the road will be much fewer. If you get it wrong, the apprentice quickly gets disenchanted, and the employer gets frustrated. It takes a lot of work behind the scenes for apprenticeships to be effective.