Apprentices: Assessments

(asked on 20th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions he has had with the Institute for Apprentices and Technical Education on training providers to assess apprentices' qualification based on (a) progress at work and (b) coursework results.


Answered by
Gillian Keegan Portrait
Gillian Keegan
Secretary of State for Education
This question was answered on 27th April 2020

Wherever possible, we want apprentices and employers to continue apprenticeships and complete end-point assessment. We are working closely with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to introduce flexibilities to mitigate the effects of disruption to assessment, training or employment caused by the Covid-19 outbreak.

End-point assessments can now be carried out remotely if they are authorised by the external quality assurance provider for the apprenticeship standard. The requirements for this are set out in the guidance published on the IfATE’s website: https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/response-to-covid-19/.

Our intention is to safeguard the quality of apprenticeships and end-point assessment is an important part of that. We do not consider that it would be appropriate to estimate an apprentice’s occupational competence by other means.

Guidance setting out how the apprenticeship programme is responding to the impact of Covid-19 is available here: www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-apprenticeship-programme-response. We are keeping the guidance under review and will publish updates as the situation evolves.

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