Here at Good2Go Awards we have been busy doing the day to day activity of supporting employers, training providers, colleges and apprentices through to the end of their apprenticeship journey.
Some amazing things happened to us recently and I felt we should share one example with the wider market to show you just how far End Point Assessment Organisations can go.
Qualitrain have been delivering the Tunnelling Operative level 2 apprenticeship for a few years now, the most recent cohort were 4 months away from completing when the EPAO who was going to do the EPAs ceased trading.
What on earth can we do now??
None of the EPAO’s approached by DfE were able to support this apprenticeship as the EPA process was complex, subject matter experts were hard to find and the volumes were not high.
After several conversations we started talking to the Senior Assessment and Assurance Manager responsible for this sector from DfE and we found that the only way it was going to work to ensure the apprentices were not disadvantaged through long delays was for us to work on special dispensation to allow us to complete the EPA’s for these apprentices.
With the help of Russell Mason, Tunnelling trainer extraordinaire, TunnelSkills and DfE we achieved the impossible of starting to develop the EPA process in late May to actually completing and after external moderation from DfE being able to confirm the results to the apprentices and their employers in September.
All 19 of the apprentices have had their results and are moving into full time roles with their respective employers.
We at Good2Go Awards would like to thank the apprentices for their patience, the employers for their understanding and DfE for facilitating this. Russell and Abi from J3M Construction Training and Sam from TunnelSkills for their help and support in getting this over the line with minimal disruption to the apprentices. The development team at Good2Go were challenged to achieve this in record time and Alan & Kay have done an unbelievable job to pull it all together.
In external moderation none of the results were changed which showed our teams ability to build a robust and easy to follow set of processes which stood the highest test from DfE.
We pride ourselves in our diligence and our flexibility but this one was a real stretch to get over the line.