What Might your Achievement Rate be Hiding?

Provider achievement rates receive significant attention from boards, governors and executive teams because they provide a straightforward indication of overall performance. They are often one of the first measures reviewed when leaders seek reassurance that apprenticeship provision is performing well.

The challenge is that achievement rates are averages, and averages can conceal important variation.

A provider may report a healthy achievement rate and still have significant weaknesses developing within parts of its apprenticeship provision. Some programmes may consistently produce strong outcomes whilst others may see only around half of apprentices successfully complete. The headline figure remains reassuring, yet the experience of apprentices and employers can differ significantly depending on where they are enrolled.

This matters because apprentices do not experience provider achievement rates. They experience the apprenticeship programme they are actually undertaking. Employers do not experience provider achievement rates either. They experience the capability, confidence and workplace contribution of the apprentice sitting in front of them.

The challenge becomes even greater when lower-performing provision remains above a specialist national benchmark. In those circumstances, leaders can understandably take reassurance from the comparison. Benchmarking provides useful context, but it does not change the reality for apprentices currently enrolled on that programme.

If half of apprentices are still not successfully completing, the fact that performance remains above a national average should raise questions rather than end the discussion.

When achievement varies significantly between programmes, the most important leadership conversation is rarely about the headline figure itself. It is about understanding what sits beneath it. Differences in employer contribution, workplace opportunities, apprentice development and the consistency with which concerns are identified and addressed can all influence outcomes. Until those differences are properly understood, leaders risk becoming reassured by the average whilst missing the variation underneath it.

At this stage of the academic year, those questions become particularly important because achievement rates largely describe what has already happened. They tell us about cohorts that have completed, but they provide very little assurance about apprentices who remain on programme today.

The apprentices who will influence next year’s achievement rates are still developing now. If concerns are emerging within those cohorts, achievement rates are unlikely to reveal them until much later, when there is considerably less opportunity to influence the outcome.

A productive conversation with apprenticeship leaders might begin with a small number of straightforward questions:

• Which programmes are performing materially differently from the provider average, and why?
• Where is employer contribution to apprentice development strongest and weakest?
• Which current cohorts give us greatest confidence, and why?
• Which current cohorts concern us most, and why?
• What evidence demonstrates that apprentices are developing the knowledge, skills and behaviours intended at this stage of the apprenticeship Standard?
• What evidence demonstrates that apprentices remain on course for Gateway and planned end date?

The quality of those answers often reveals far more than the headline achievement rate itself.

Strong leadership is not simply about understanding last year’s result. It is about understanding what is happening within current cohorts whilst there is still time available to influence the outcome. If apprenticeship leaders cannot answer those questions clearly today, there is a real possibility that future achievement rates are already taking shape without anyone fully understanding why.

By Andy Hillerby, Founder of Apprenticeship Improvement