Using customer centric approaches, ways of working, technical innovations and a sound data strategy, we create very accurate payments – every month. We do the hard work so our users don’t have to. In addition, a model of reuse has enabled us to respond to programme, policy, and ministerial requests to incentivise employers to take on apprentices - a group who we collectively need to protect as we recover and move on from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here at the Apprenticeship Service we have always been customer focused; from the first day that I engaged the first employer onto the first employer digital service, we were committed to understanding their needs and responding to meet them. This is nothing new but all around us is a period of uncertainty and change following the pandemic and for young people it is critical that we create opportunities. Employers being incentivised to create apprenticeship opportunities need to be reassured and trust that payments will be forthcoming and providers who train the apprentices need to be reassured that their payments are accurate.
It’s fair to say that payments and the accuracy of payments has been an ongoing priority since the introduction of the Levy in 2017 and since then payments to providers have been honed to an incredibly high accuracy rate of very nearly 100%. We pay £millions to providers each month and £billions per year so accuracy is vital.
The nature of provider payments means that there is a very short window from providers sending in their data via the ILR at the end of the month, to then being matched to five corresponding bits of data in the employer accounts, to then being paid. Most of the processes have been automated, however millions of lines of code require analysis to determine the payments for each individual learner, which could be around nearly half a million learners a month.
Ways of working are critical to making what is a very technically heavy process work seamlessly. The Digital Team, Product Owner and Business Analyst prioritise the backlog, while the Delivery Manager works closely with the team. Daily stand ups, scrum of scrums, and sprint planning are all critical, as well as product alignment sessions and ‘theme sessions’ with the Employer Incentive team to share good practice and pass on knowledge to the emerging ‘sister payments team’. Data Collections and the Apprenticeship Service (two separate parts of the organisation) work closely to ensure month end runs smoothly. Product Owners are in almost daily contact and the Technical Team, including our own apprentice developers and testers, solve any technical issues before they emerge at month end. Every bit of code is tested in an end-to-end replica of the live environment. It’s fair to say this is Agile at scale working across the boundaries of the organisation.
Throughout the month, as Service Owner, I have access to real time data through dashboards so that I can see any problems or anomalies in the data being submitted, a very powerful tool to ensure there are no surprises at month end. Final checks are always conducted by business experts before payments are confirmed. The nature of the cloud based, technical innovation means that millions of lines of code are analysed to determine very accurate payments in less than 2 hours end-to-end, this was 14 hours when we first started 4 years ago with far less payments, so we have come a long way.
Support is also critical from the Clans (professional communities) and the clan leads. My lead developer runs the ‘Quality Guild’ a group of leads (lead Developer, tester, devops, architect, security, ethical hacker, and data architect) that solve technical problems and eradicate ‘Tech debt’ (technical issues that are on the backlog following the MVS releases). They work closely with the service desk to iron out problems in customer experience, and prevent users experiencing problems, either with user interfaces or with payments.
This model has been honed so effectively that it was used to enable the Service to respond quickly to lessen the impact of the pandemic on potential apprentices by offering employer incentive payments to employers who hire a new apprentice. A delivery team was mobilised in 2 days, the application process was delivered in just 14 weeks and the first payments were out to employers directly (a new capability for the organisation) within 5 months. This was only possible because of the work that the provider payments team had put in. This new funding model, with new business processes, that will pave the way for future capability has now paid £millions of Employer Incentives and many more millions are in the system. We can also see who has registered, entered an apprenticeship start, and been paid, from being nudged as part of a Campaign through to the call to action as we collect and analyse the data as part of the underpinning data strategy.
The Apprenticeship Service now moves forward to deliver an exciting range of joined up products supported by content on Apprenticeships.gov.uk, service support, a continuous improvement team and build teams with service design, user research, policy and business experts at the heart. Our user researchers have conducted 13,000 user research sessions in 5 years.
A remarkable achievement and an achievement which creates a great customer experience and millions of opportunities for Apprentices on Find an Apprenticeship and hundreds of thousands of employers. A Service to be proud of.
If you would like to be part of the Apprenticeship Service and genuinely change lives then please look at the current vacancies here.
It’s a pandemic, I’m a single mum with 3 boys, a school governor at two schools, I have a full-time job as a Senior Apprenticeship Policy Manager in the Apprenticeship Service, and I’m a Level 7 Senior Leaders Master’s Degree Apprentice. What was I thinking?
The Master of Business Administration in Leadership and Management was originally focused heavily on businesses and private organisations. However, they have rewritten the modules to have a much bigger focus on Public Sector Organisations which has been great to fit the work within the Education Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).
My apprenticeship has involved a huge amount of organisation and time management in every aspect of my life, even during the COVID-19 pandemic when I wasn’t able to go out and do anything else. I am able to manage my workload to incorporate the 20% off the job training, however, at the level I am studying there needs to be a personal commitment. I study at least as many hours in my own time, especially when assignments and exams are due.
I find that some of the biggest benefits to me have been around personal discipline and time management, having committed to three years of studying. I have realised:
⦁ Professionally it has developed so many skills and vastly increased my knowledge and understanding of theory in areas such as strategy, finance, marketing, people management and change management. I now hope to put more of these into practice.
⦁ Personally, I like to be learning something all the time, and firmly believe in the quote from a colleague ‘every day is a school day’.
⦁ Last but not least, I am looking forward to my MBA graduation when I go up on that stage and my children, hopefully, will sit in the audience. I want them to be proud of me, I’m hoping to inspire them to do and be whatever they want to be in life.
I feel that the biggest benefit to the organisation has been the new skills that I have acquired on my apprenticeship journey. The academic learning has been extremely useful and fits well with a lot of the work I do, but developing new skills and abilities can be used for further knowledge building and development. All aspects of the course build on required skills, the residential schools are extremely good for building close working relationships and trust with others very quickly, working closely together throughout residentials on theories and knowledge, culminating in a group presentation to the school at the end.
Working within the apprenticeship service has given me insight to see apprenticeships from the ‘other side’ and has greatly supported my development. I am more aware of training provider behaviour and the practicality of implementing funding rules requirements and ways they can be interpreted. I have been able to see a wider view of the way apprenticeships work in practice.
At this level of study there is a big emphasis on reflective practice and critical analysis rather than just learning things. Self-reflection is perhaps the hardest part for me. At times it can be uncomfortable for everyone, but self-reflection is an important skill to have in all areas of your life, to look back at an activity or day and objectively see what you did, did well, can do better and what you would change next time.
My apprenticeship has really allowed me to apply new skills, knowledge, and behaviours to my job. I have found some aspects easy to evidence for my portfolio, whilst other areas including the last module Strategic Finance more stretching, who knows when I will need to use my knowledge of hedge funds in the future?
Now, I have the last academic module, a six-month research project putting into practice all the knowledge and skills I have developed. This is made up of a 10,000 word academic assignment to complete the MBA, and a 4,000 word business report which will be used in my professional discussion and presentation with the end- point assessment panel.
My apprenticeship experience has brought about lots of feelings, from a great sense of accomplishment when I have achieved merits in a difficult topic like Strategy, to how am I going to get it all done in time! I’ve learnt so much, but at times I’ve felt the challenge of juggling family, work and trying to get assignments in on time. In my heart I know it’s worth it, often overcoming the greatest challenges are the most rewarding.
For more information, visit our government website apprenticeships.gov.uk
Follow @ESFAdigital on Twitter.
2020 was an unprecedented year for us all. However, the impacts on those just starting their career were significant. The job market flattened, often with apprentice and graduate jobs being the first to be cut, as companies battened down the hatches for the uncertainty ahead.
As an organisation within an industry that, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, had growth opportunities in 2020, we were able to continue our investment in early and emerging talent.
There was inevitable nervousness about continuing to deliver our award-winning programmes and induction virtually, as well as up to 9 weeks of up front training for our apprentices through our providers, which would ordinarily take place in a face to face environment. The move to virtual delivery was particularly pertinent as we considered the impact on our graduates and apprentices joining an organisation virtually, at a time when they were not able to go to the office and interact with colleagues to establish relationships. Despite these obstacles, we went ahead, recognising that supporting individuals into work whilst fulfilling our clients evolving needs, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, was a necessity.
Ensuring our joiners had a positive experience was of paramount importance to us. We ripped up the rule book in terms of our induction, it quickly became a 2-day virtual production with a playlist to create energy throughout, engaging online interaction through quizzes, a variety of speakers, and we even transformed our usual evening activities to be virtual. We set up virtual coffee sessions and added fundamental extra steps in place to ensure that laptop delivery and set up was as smooth as possible – not an easy task.
We also worked incredibly closely with our training providers to ensure that virtual delivery, particularly for our apprentices, was still delivering the highest quality of experience and training. We were blown away by our apprentices and the level of agility demonstrated by our providers and partners.
Throughout everything we did, our key priority was the health and wellbeing of our employees. To support our community, we had increased touchpoints with new joiners and cohorts at varying stages of the programme, provided further insights to our employee assistance programme and increased the visibility of our mental health champions.
By the end of 2020, we’d hired over 160 graduates and 45 apprentices and are incredibly proud to have continued our commitment to increasing the UK early and emerging talent workforce. Needless to say, we were most proud of our new joiners. The resilience they demonstrated through joining us virtually was incredible.
Our existing apprentices were also hugely committed and the results we saw from our degree apprentices in particular were phenomenal – their ability to carry on with their programme and deliver the results they did was fantastic!
We were also delighted that some of our apprentices got the opportunity to meet the Minister for Apprenticeship and Skills, Gillian Keegan. It was brilliant for the group to virtually share their apprenticeship journey’s so far and to hear from the Minister about her own experiences of being an apprentice.
Looking forward into 2021, we could never have envisaged that we would have the biggest volume of graduates and apprentices joining us, since we began our programmes over 10 years ago. This year we will welcome over 115 apprentices to Capgemini across the United Kingdom, in addition we are launching 7 new apprenticeships, meaning that we now provide 23 programmes across a range of specialisms including Business Administration, Digital Marketing, Data and DevOps – 5 years ago we were delivering 5 programmes. The appetite across the business to invest in this community is increasing enormously and we are also diversifying the mix of our programmes adding in more Level 3 and Level 4 into our portfolio, as well as continuing our commitment to degree apprentices. We recognise that by offering programmes across all levels enables us to grow the diversity within our organisation and provide a range of opportunities.
During National Apprenticeship Week, we recognised the opportunity to inspire other organisations to think about apprenticeships. We identified that smaller employers would have questions about navigating through the apprenticeship service, and to us collaboration is key in the apprenticeship area. We arranged an employer webinar with over 50 attendees, featuring key members of our teams across programme and recruitment, as well as one of our clients who we worked with closely when they were launching their first degree apprenticeship and where we continue our collaboration throughout our joint apprenticeship experience. We shared our insights and perspectives, receiving great feedback.
We also held an event to celebrate our apprentices who graduated from their programmes in 2020 who weren’t able to join a face-to-face graduation or celebrate with their families and friends. Over 50 apprentices and their families joined us, as well as several senior leaders across Capgemini UK and representatives from the ESFA. We had video messages from those who had worked closely with the apprentices and a montage of photos and memories of the apprentices’ time on programme. Celebrating success is incredibly important to us as we recognise the significant effort it takes to complete an apprenticeship alongside a full-time job, and we want this to be highlighted.
In summary, if you are thinking about hiring an apprentice it is quite simply one of the best decisions a business can take. As an organisation that has invested in apprentices for over 10 years, we have seen the raw talent, determination, and incredible results that our apprentices have delivered. The value they bring to our organisation is significant and in hiring the highest volume of apprentices we have historically hired this year, we recognise that this is an investment worth making now and for the future, and one we plan to continue.
You can search hundreds of apprenticeships on our employer hub
The last 18 months of my life have been dominated by several key events: the formal completion of my doctoral studies, the country being placed into lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally, joining the Department for Education as a user researcher. It goes without saying that how I have experienced my time in government has been greatly influenced by the first two events. I’ve often heard the argument made that research is research regardless of context, sector or industry. Drawing on my own experiences I would stand in opposition to such claims. My entry into digital research involved something of a culture shock that required substantial adjustment, but it also enabled a deeper learning as a researcher that had been absent during my academic journey.
When your PhD thesis is accepted you are bestowed with the highest possible academic degree and earn the title of "Doctor". It is the culmination of 4 years of solid research and the synergising of this work into an 80,000 word document. Essentially, the equivalent of a book. Looking back, I’m still not sure how I did it. But beyond the academic title and feeling of pride, the ultimate result was the learning of how to do research. I had become a professional researcher. However, this process had involved following specific practices constrained by rigid expectations to produce work destined for an academic context. Nevertheless, I began the expected journey of a new academic by undertaking a fellowship, conducting research, and producing papers. It was only after I started doing research in a digital and government environment that I begin to fully appreciate how narrow this learning had been.
During my PhD I had often wondered about my role as researcher. Just how was my work helping to improve society? Contributing to the existing body of academic literature was not enough. I wanted to do research that was directly beneficial to people. Not to society but to actual people. I quickly understood that all roads lead out of academia if I wanted to do this. Six months after formally completing my doctoral studies I joined the Department for Education as a user researcher.
On entry into the Department, I was excited by both the prospect of researching "users" but equally thrown by the different approaches to (and expectations of) research. Following core Agile principles in government, research occurs in rounds where the recruiting, conducting, analysing and reporting of findings is condensed into a matter of weeks. This can be sharply contrasted with academic research which can take place over several years. I had to adapt, and adapt quickly.
Another aspect of Agile working that was completely alien to me was the close collaboration with colleagues. Research in academia can be deeply isolating with individual researchers holed up in their offices and only seeing colleagues when they venture out to grab a cup of coffee. I was now part of a team, and a truly multi-disciplinary one at that. On joining the Find Apprenticeship Training team I was introduced to the product owner, delivery manager, business analyst, UX designer, content writer, testers and developers. Pretty dizzying for someone who had the idea of siloed working ingrained into them. Despite it appearing that these different backgrounds had been thrown together at random, I quickly understood I had joined a well-oiled machine where communication, collaboration and transparency were key. I found this was especially important as I took my place as part of the design cycle working closely with the team’s UX designer and content writer. The contrast with my academic experience is that during the last 6 months I have felt more connected with colleagues who I have never physically met than during my entire academic journey.
My transition to doing research with users in a digital environment transcended a mere change of context. The change to "normality" brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t just impact how I worked with colleagues but also how I did my research. For example, I quickly had to get to grips with remote usability testing with actual users of the service. This necessitated not only learning new methods and ways of researching but also saw me develop a deeper empathy with those I was researching. In an academic environment the people being researched are known individually as "participant" or "respondent", and collectively as a "sample".
Researching users enlightened me to the numerous challenges faced by the people using our service and how the additional difficulties brought about by the pandemic impacted their daily lives. These were not just numbers representing a sample but real people facing real hardships. Using research to advocate for their needs has allowed me to impact people’s lives more directly. Ultimately, this is why I set out to do research in the first place.
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As designers, solving user problems is built within our DNA. We create our best designs when we work together to solve issues that users face.
You start with the goal of renovating your living room, planning to refresh the walls and improve the decor. It's only when you pull off the wallpaper that you find the plaster is cracked and falling apart. What started off as renovation now includes skimming too.
With the cost of skimming, you think it's more effective to rewire now and save on future costs and effort.
What was meant to be a simple renovation, grows into something much bigger. So you analyse your options:
Working on the Apprenticeship Service can also feel like a DIY home project. I always encourage designers to speak up, share ideas and thoughts when we peel back the plaster and come across bigger problems that we didn’t expect to find.
It’s important to fix things at source, so that we can grow and develop our service without needing to redo it later. Having a safe space, structures, and a culture that supports this will enable people to say what they think. In the long run this saves the service money and means all our renovation work doesn’t continuously need rewiring.
As designers, what do you do when the response is "it's a policy decision" or the decision is already made? Which battles do you fight and how far do you push? What can you do if the scope does not reflect what needs to be done?
The ‘Find apprenticeship training’ team demonstrated the value of showing will and determination to do the right thing. Their service is used by employers to find:
Initially, the scrum team and stakeholders assumed that end-point assessment organisations would remain in the service and that we would redesign it to present them in a clearer way.
The original vision for the service was that employers would find a training provider and an end-point assessment organisation within a single journey. During the discovery phase, we found that it was too early for the employer to decide who would assess their apprentices. It also distracted them from choosing the right apprenticeship and training provider.
We had to get over the assumption that assessment organisations would be included in a single transaction. We joined up with policy to understand the needs, but also to help us align to move forwards together.
There are operational benefits when employers consider an assessment organisation earlier on, but it became clear that our service was not the right place for this decision. As a team, we showed stakeholders why this was a problem and proposed an alternative solution.
There was a clear user need for a separate service, as employers still need somewhere to find assessment organisations.
We knew that we needed to consult the:
Approaching these stakeholders without a solution to the problem may have taken us down the wrong path. So we explored the problem, alternative solutions and their benefits before consulting with our stakeholders.
We put together a slide deck consisting of 6 slides to aid the discussions.
We created a lean UX canvas at the start of the project to highlight our objectives and establish our aim.
We summarised:
We proposed that finding an end-point assessment organisation did not fit within the find apprenticeship training service and that we would explore if there is a user need for a separate service.
We listed the key improvements from separating the task out and creating a standalone service for it.
A visual aid helped to communicate our idea and the direction the team wants to go in, so we built a prototype using the GOV.UK Prototype Kit.
We also created a sitemap using screenshots of the prototype. At a glance, anyone can see the size and concept of the service.
We summarised the next steps, which included revising the surrounding guidance for assessment organisations, informing affected teams and considering where to host our service.
Creating a separate service to find an end-point assessment organisation means that employers can stay in control of this task if they wish to, but can also use it at the right phase of their apprenticeship journey. Everyone was on board with this direction and the team continued to conduct research with two distinct services.
This win-win environment feels like a job well done and potentially a massive saving where we don’t need to go back to the core to fix the wiring in the future. We saved the find apprenticeship training service from becoming complex while staying true to the service purpose.
As designers, we should be confident in using our user-experience expertise to influence stakeholders when we believe there is a better way to solve a problem. The more we influence, the more our design discipline will strengthen and we in return build trust.
Follow @ESFAdigital on Twitter.
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My name is Rob. I’m a 29-year-old Mancunian and I joined the Department for Education (DfE) in January 2020 as an apprentice developer, being a recent graduate in chemical engineering who didn’t fancy living on an oil rig. The small amount of knowledge of web development that I had prior to joining the DfE was gained from the plentiful free resources that can be found on the internet. Whilst self-study is good for learning the basics, nothing beats the experience of working in a delivery team. An apprenticeship was the perfect option for me, enabling me to get real-world work experience whilst being given time to learn new concepts, as well as being mentored by experienced developers.
My apprenticeship is Level 4 Software Developer, and it will last 18 months. I will have to pass an exam as well as produce a portfolio of work. The apprenticeship is delivered as a mixture of on and off the job training, with the external training being provided through monthly 2-day workshops. In order for my skills to be assessed, I will be sitting a Microsoft programming exam, submitting a portfolio of work, undertaking a week-long assessed synoptic project, and being interviewed by an industry specialist.
My entry into the civil service went very smoothly as I settled into the office in Manchester and made friends with the 5 other apprentices in my software development cohort. I spent the first months on the job studying the programming languages used within our teams at the DfE (C#, .NET) and was closely mentored by an experienced developer. The apprenticeship workshops gave me a great foundation to build on at work and covered a range of key skills that a developer needs, such as usage of version control, continuous integration, databases, and testing. I found the transition to working from home to suit me well due to the fantastic digital community presence in place at the DfE, and have kept in constant contact with my colleagues using Teams and Slack. I have enjoyed using the "Give control" functionality in Teams to allow for remote pair programming.
I joined the apprenticeship service at the end of June and began work in the analytics team. I found myself working with technologies and concepts that I had never seen before and ended up learning a lot about databases and SQL. During my 6 weeks with the analytics team, I shadowed engineers who were working on bringing data from the apprenticeship service into a central repository. Analytics from these are used to advise the senior management team and measure the performance of the different services in the department.
After this, I joined the Find Apprenticeship Training team which is a team in the Apprenticeship Service. This team is hard at work delivering the new and updated version of Find Apprenticeship Training and uses technologies with which I am more familiar. The FAT team works in an agile way, in 2 week sprints, with a short feedback loop that I find to be very useful for learning as a new developer. There are a variety of roles within the team, with 3 developers, a tester, a UX/UI designer, a content writer, a user researcher, a delivery manager and a product owner. This has given me insight into the wide range of skills and expertise that are needed to build, maintain, and improve the services that the DfE deliver. So far, I have been assigned several tasks, which I have enjoyed completing (with plenty of help and guidance from the senior developers on the team).
Overall, I’ve had a great time working in the DfE so far and have thoroughly enjoyed my apprenticeship. I have found the apprenticeship service to be a very welcoming environment to work in and have learnt a lot. I would also definitely recommend an apprenticeship as a route to getting started with a career in software or web development.
You can look for apprenticeship vacancies on our ‘Find an apprenticeship’ website.
Follow @ESFAdigital on Twitter.
At the ESFA we have been conducting research with providers focusing on how they submit data to us and where improvements can be made. We looked at what transpires before and after submission of the ILR returns.
Admittedly the learner data submitted by a provider is quite complex and the plot thickens with each ILR (Individualised Learner Record) return. AFED was created to empower FE providers with a deeper insight into their submitted learner data. The groundwork was laid by conducting frequent yet detailed user research sessions, considering the provider feedback which is vital for each successful release.
We found that the sheer volume of data can pose a big burden for providers; the managing, collecting, submission and understanding of it all. There are several reports provided after submitting an ILR return to help providers, but these can be overwhelming in their differences and format.
Another finding was how large and small providers differ in what resources they can allocate to the task of data management and resolution of any data errors. Whole teams, with bespoke systems, exist in educational settings with larger providers, while smaller providers struggle to satisfy the data reporting requirements.
What is clear for both, is that a significant amount of time and money is spent on the process of data management and reporting.
As we collect data from all further education providers, we have information that would be beneficial to share with the sector to help others understand their position.
This could be through giving reliable financial projections based on achievement rates, a sector average for a certain type of provider or how close a provider is to becoming at risk in specific categories.
These are what providers have asked for and want to see. The idea being that they can be proactive, instead of reacting to errors after submitting a return or being financially penalised.
This information could be given to providers in a format that is designed based on user feedback. This allows us to produce a tool that is relevant and meaningful to the people that use it, rather than what we assume you want or need.
Over the past few months, we have been working on a data reporting tool that will show your position after every submitted ILR return. It will be broken down into 5 sections comprising learner, funding, benchmarking, quality, and compliance. These areas were identified in the research as being the most important.
With each new development we make, we release it to a ‘private beta’ group. This is a group of providers working with us to give feedback. This small group enables us to develop, test, release, and respond quickly to changes that need to be made.
The tool will be released on view your education data (VYED). You will need an Identity and Access Management System (IDAMS) account to get access to the tool. Once in VYED, you will also need to request the ‘View Your Education Data – AFED’ role.
There is no limit on who can have access from one’s educational setting. Ideally, we would want anyone who finds it helpful to have access to it. Each setting’s allocated ‘super user’ may need to give others access once the tool is available.
We have built AFED using Microsoft’s Power BI software, some of you may be familiar with Power BI from using the QAR reports on VYED.
This release focusses on learner data, with future releases including additional sections. The section is split into education and training (E&T) and apprenticeships for simplicity. You will be able to see learner numbers categorised by their status of learning, as well as the aims by status.
You can filter the data by funding models, 3 years’ worth of data and individual return periods. We have been able to show an average against providers of the same type, meaning that you can get an idea of how others are performing.
There are 3 ‘drill throughs’, so sections that show your data in more detail. The sections are learners (individual aims), demographics and subcontractors. Each section can be filtered, enabling you to tailor the data to your needs.
Every visual and section of data can be exported from Power BI by hovering over the element and selecting the 3 dots to see ‘export’.
Four tiles will show the number of aims by status from the latest return and show a comparison against the previous return.
A large table of all your aims is made up of several categories, allowing you to see what is relevant to you and refine using the filter. Again, it will show 3 years’ worth of data and can be filtered by one, or many, returns.
There are 3 visuals, legal sex, learning difficulty and health problems, and ethnicity, all of which can be viewed as a graph or table. Each is split up by return to show your performance through the academic year.
This will only apply to those providers who contract out some of their learning to subcontractors. It will be blank if it does not apply to you.
The first table shows your learners, while the second table details your subcontractors. A simple way to see all aims for one subcontractor, is to use the right-mouse button on the subcontractor you want and select ‘drill through’.
The tool will contain a quick guide of how to use Power BI, if you are new to the functions, and guidance on elements within the tool. There will also be definitions for terms we have used.
Where possible, we have tried to retain familiar terms, and their meaning, used within the sector. Again, relying on user research to inform our choice of language.
The link ‘submit a help enquiry’ (within the tool) will act as a place for you to tell us something isn’t working or to ask for guidance.
About two years ago my girlfriend and I bought our first flat, took on an intimidating 40 year mortgage and transferred more money in one go then I ever want to do again. About a month later I told her dad that I was planning to propose. I turned 30 a few days later, and a week after that, I resigned from my job as a marketing manager with no other job to go to. At the time it sounded reckless. To be honest, as I read these sentences back, it still does.
However, I had a reason. I quit my job because, after 5 years in that industry, I realised that I was approaching a new period of my life with a career that I felt just wasn’t for me. When you are 24, a start-up with a fridge full of beer and free burritos on Fridays sounds great. But when you reach 30, unfashionable things like 'qualifications' and 'mentorship' and - my 22 year old self would roll his eyes if he heard me say this - 'structure', becomes a priority. With this in mind, I quit my job and joined a developer masterclass in Manchester called Code Nation where I studied Software Development for 3 months. My fellow students included a 19-year-old girl from Wigan and a man in his early 40s who had just been made redundant, as well as a collection of other people who had come from very different starting positions.
After I finished the developer masterclass, I got a job in Stockport. I experienced an Agile environment for the first time and became certain that a career as a developer was right for me. All the seemingly aimless, never-ending tasks that consumed me in my previous career had been replaced with structure, transparency, and clarity.
After 5 months in my first junior developer role an opportunity came up to join the Department for Education as an apprentice developer. Although my role in Stockport had given me a chance to be a developer, I felt like my momentum had slowed. I wanted to keep learning and progressing. The apprenticeship offered me both the development and level of challenge that I was looking for so I felt it was an opportunity not to be missed. I applied, was successful and started my new journey in January 2020.
Since joining, I have focused on learning the Microsoft-Stack: C#, ASP.NET Core MVC, Entity Framework and a number of other packages that a year earlier would have meant absolutely nothing to me. Whilst my fiancé did Pilates in the next room, I spent the early stages of my time with the Department completing tech tasks set out by my line manager and preparing for a surprisingly intense Azure workshop and exam – which the Department funded – that prepared me to join the Find An Apprenticeship Training team (more affectionately known as FAT.) On-the-job training gave me an invaluable opportunity to apply my new knowledge and help the team develop version 2 of the FAT website. This confirmed my career switch had been the right thing: I loved the process of ‘refine a ticket, score a ticket, work on the ticket, test it, merge it, reflect and repeat’. On this team, everyone knows their role and everyone is accountable. I never anticipated becoming such an Agile fan, but the approach encourages people to talk with the aim of achieving a shared goal.
Because of COVID-19, a lot of people have spent the last six months refocusing their priorities. I did the same thing but a year earlier. Fortunately for me, the last year has shown that it is possible to make scary decisions - and for those decisions to pay off. The apprenticeship with the Department for Education has offered me the development path and structure that I craved. My advice now is, reflect on your career goals, if you want to make a change, just go for it.
You can look for apprenticeship vacancies on our ‘Find an apprenticeship’ website.
Follow @ESFAdigital on Twitter.
In the list of common phobias, examination and assessment nerves rates pretty highly. However for me the End Point Assessment part of my apprenticeship was almost an enjoyable experience.
I started my Operations / Departmental manager Level 5 apprenticeship in March 2018, as I was new to my managerial role at Gordon Franks Training. I was excited to take up my new position managing 15 tutors, but I knew it would be challenging and I wanted to back up what I was doing at work with high quality training. Before this I was a freelance assessor, so my new role was a big step up.
I was lucky enough to work for a company which is invested in and values apprenticeships, so my manager was really supportive. A big part of staff development programmes at Gordon Franks is undertaken through apprenticeships, so I knew I was following a very well-established path, which would stand me in good stead for further progression. The company is keen to promote managers within the business, so they use the management apprenticeship standards to form their own development programme, meaning the apprenticeship I did was very tailored to my own job.
I took part in off the job training each week for about 6 hours per week. This was time away from the office, attending training sessions and doing independent research to learn the theory behind management. When we went into lockdown in March I started to work from home and all training was delivered remotely instead of face-to-face. The off-the-job part of my apprenticeship help confidence soar as I learned new ways to manage people and teams. I also learned about project management because I had to complete a 3000 word project towards the end of my apprenticeship. I chose the topic with the help of my managing director. Together we chose an area that was of concern to the business. Working on it was really beneficial to myself, my team and the organisation, as it was all about reducing the number of over-stayers (learners who have exceeded their target date so are no longer funded) that we had.
When it came to completing my end-point assessment I was nervous at first as no-one likes the idea of a test. However, there was nothing to worry about. My training provider prepared me for the EPA by going through how the assessment would be carried out remotely and by making sure I was familiar with the e-portfolio. As part of my assessment, I completed a knowledge test, presented my project, and had a professional discussion about my job role and the CPD that I had obtained throughout. We were in lockdown, so it all had to be done remotely. I was assessed at home and the invigilator joined via Teams.
I found out I had been successful approximately two working days later. I was delighted and to celebrate I treated myself and my family to a takeaway, as COVID-19 meant we couldn’t go out.
I would definitely recommend an apprenticeship for other people. It is a great way to get ahead and meet new people who can show you different perspectives to help you to do your job, whatever sector your work in. If people are worried about the final assessment, I’d like to set their mind at ease. I can say from experience that the assessor wants you to achieve and show all you can do. There’s nothing to catch you out. It’s a world away from sitting in an examination hall for two hours – you’re basically showing the assessor that you know how to do your job and can cope with challenges. Just go for it!
To find out more about end-point assessment join the ESFA webinar for employers: The value of assessment in apprenticeships on Wednesday Oct 7, 2020 at 12:30 to 1.30pm.
This webinar will help employers understand the value of assessment, completion and achievement of apprenticeships. It will include:
• The value of assessment and how we are managing quality
• Employer case study – Q & A on why assessment, completion and achievement is important for employers and for an apprentices career
To join please log on to https://www.gotostage.com/channel/apprenticeshipservicewebinars
Follow @ESFAdigital on Twitter.
An exciting challenge is how we create our capability to engage directly with employers through digital channels, driven by data.
We’re thinking about our technology, creating new roles for people in the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), upskilling our own people, creating new business processes to capture customer data, and planning campaign journeys – to bring citizens through from awareness to action.
As part of this we’re using a software tool called Marketo that will enable us to move into the world of marketing automation – using service data to personalise the information customers receive from us via email and through social media platforms. This will help us to reach a wider audience, as we open up the apprenticeship service to smaller employers.
We’re excited about personalising the service we provide for those users. For instance, if we know a small business is searching for accountancy standards, and they haven’t employed apprentices before, then we can use that insight to know better what kinds of content to share with them and at what point.
If they search for a standard and then don’t act, we can plan in a nudge intervention of an email or phone call.
Of course, this level of information sourcing will require informed consent from the end user. If they are more cautious about sharing data then they will still receive and access information, but if they provide more data then we can give them a truly personalised and hopefully more relevant experience.
A challenge for us is that we are trailblazers in this space and these are complex services at scale. The best relevant example we can point to is Amazon, a platform which brings together sellers and buyers in a seamless way. They really know their customers, and support them to make the right choices for them.
The apprenticeship service team works closely with the employer relations and communications division, bringing their face-to-face customer experience expertise to unite with the systems thinking and data from our digital services.
It’s a powerful combination of data, insight and diverse skills and people. We want to revolutionise quality in apprenticeships, ensuring that employers, citizens and parents have confidence in apprenticeships, and that apprentices get the experience and outcomes they deserve, with the best training providers and assessment organisations to make it happen.
We are entering new territory. To date, much of ESFA’s focus has been on the top 6,000 or so employers, accounting for 95% of the apprenticeship levy. It made business sense, at the outset, to focus our engagement resources on targeting those companies.
But now, we’re moving to a new world, in which all businesses can register on the apprenticeship service in a phased approach, and we can’t extend our face-to-face and telephone account management offering to up to 150,000 employers.
We will use marketing automation and machine learning to get to know those customers, offering neutral, trusted advice and information. We plan to be joined up, so we’re not just talking about apprenticeships but about the whole offering to employers and citizens of T Levels, traineeships and supported internships.
We want to help employers make good decisions and to provide excellent apprenticeship programmes. And we aim to give businesses tools that let them assess the return on investment for their organisation, so they can make a compelling case to their colleagues about the impact of hiring apprentices and upskilling existing workforces with skills training.
As a government organisation, we can promote the benefits of reaching marginalised, disadvantaged groups and increasing diversity in recruitment and opportunities. This is even more important with the economic impact of the pandemic and the potential for increased marginalisation in society.
Apart from Covid-19, perhaps our biggest challenge as an organisation is belief. When we starting talking about an agile way of working and having product owners and service streams, it was a radical shift in thinking, culture and direction. Now that we’ve proved it can work, building up, constantly testing and iterating, our next hurdle is to scale up and again significantly change our business model and how our teams look and operate.
It’s an exciting time to work here and we don’t yet know what the roles will be and how our teams will change and develop. But we do know that we want to make a positive difference to customers, raising the prestige of technical education.
We are ready for the challenge and we will do our utmost to take people on that journey with us, into a brighter, bolder, bigger, data-driven future.
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