Pat Allen, pictured, the chairman of the Fire & Security Association (FSA), discusses the importance of end-point assessments for apprenticeships.
One element of the apprenticeship reforms that has quietly slipped below the radar is the introduction of end-point assessments. These were first proposed in the Richard Review in 2012, and supported in The Future of Apprenticeships in England Implementation Plan which followed it. They aimed to provide an opportunity for the apprentice to demonstrate what they had learned during their apprenticeship and prove they were ready for the role they had been training for.
When you think about it, this is crucial for sectors such as ours. Once a security systems apprentice has completed his or her apprenticeship they will be working with systems which are designed to protect people and property from crime. They will need to be able to do this competently and confidently in order to fulfil the client’s needs, and prove that they are a capable representative of the firm they are working for. As such, it makes sense for them to have proved they are ready to do the job as part of their apprenticeship.
The assessment itself will be based on the apprenticeship standard, and will directly assess the competencies developed by an apprentice during their training – competencies that the standard itself identified as crucial to the role they were being trained for.
Because our apprenticeship has been developed with the needs of the Fire, Emergency and Security Systems sectors in mind, one of the challenges the Trailblazer group faced when developing the assessment plan was identifying which were the core technical competencies that needed to be assessed – such as Health and Safety and safe isolation, which all of the employers wanted included in the assessment- and which competencies were specific to the different pathways. Our apprentices will undertake general and specialist training as part of their apprenticeship and the assessment needed to reflect that.
Happily, we’ve managed to overcome that hurdle, and have developed an assessment plan that takes into account the core, specialist and behavioural competencies needed to forge a career in our sector – and the others which the apprenticeship has been developed for.
The inclusion of behavioural competencies in this industry’s apprenticeship plan may surprise some, but it makes sense. Although our apprentices will largely be performing a technical role for the early years of their career, there are certain ‘soft’ skills they will need to possess – not least because ours is service industry, where an ability to develop rapport with customers is crucial for all job roles.
One area of the end-point assessment which has been queried is the cost. It’s a legitimate concern, but it will be a fraction of the total cost of the apprenticeship, and under the apprentice funding proposals employers will only pay a percentage of it. Some may stand to recoup a percentage of the money they invest in their apprentices depending on whether they qualify for the proposed training levy or any of the incentive and reward payments offered under the current funding proposals.
Much like other sectors, our apprentice assessment still has a number of points that need to be developed – not least because BIS need to provide their feedback on our proposals. Once that is done, the real work begins – bringing the assessment itself to life.
