HIT Training recognised at the TES Awards 2018

HIT Training has won the ‘Training provider of the year’ award at the annual Tes FE Awards 2018.

HIT Training has taken the lead on the apprenticeship agenda. It was the first hospitality training provider to offer the new apprenticeship standards, 16 months ahead of the deadline, and has worked closely with employers to help them to understand the best way to maximise their apprenticeship programmes.

It also launched a sector-wide campaign to help to educate businesses on what the new apprenticeship levy, introduced last spring, means for them. Its levy handbook, designed to help businesses of all sizes understand the new funding system, was central to this campaign.

Since April, HIT has launched four new apprenticeship standards: hospitality supervisor, team leader, chef de partie and customer service practitioner, and a further eight standards are to be launched soon. The Chef Academy now has 16 centres across the country, designed to help employers attract and retain chefs and to assist in plugging the national skills shortage.

HIT also advises on the apprenticeship trailblazer group, and regularly provides panel speakers at national and local events, helping the sector to identify best practice and understand how to make the most of its investment in training.

HIT’s internal observation team continually monitors staff and gives feedback on how to improve. Quality assurers provide regular support remotely and face-to-face. As a result, both learner satisfaction and employer satisfaction are high – at 94 per cent and 93 per cent, respectively.

The judges said HIT Training has enjoyed “a monumental past year, driving the apprenticeship agenda. With great staff development and amazing learner and employer satisfaction, clearly HIT is one of the leaders of the sector.”

Winners attended a black-tie event at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, hosted by the comic and actor Alan Davies, where more than 800 attendees celebrated and showcased the most exciting ideas, the best practice and the most inspiring teaching and leadership to be found in the further education sector.

This year’s categories and winners are as follows:

1. Lifetime achievement: Jill Westerman, Northern College
2. Outstanding use of technology for improving teaching, learning and assessment: Basingstoke College of Technology
3. Employer engagement: Stephenson College
4. Support for learners: Kirklees College
5. Contribution to the local community: Elatt
6. Best teaching and learning initiative: Barking and Dagenham College
7. Professional services team of the year: Central Bedfordshire College
8. Apprenticeship programme of the year: Busy Bees Training Academy
9. Assessor of the year: Keith Haynes, Bedford College Group
10. Teacher of the year: Alison Scattergood, East Durham College
11. FE leader of the year: Lowell Williams, Dudley College of Technology
12. FE college of the year: Fareham College
13. Training provider of the year: HIT Training
14. Sixth-form college of the year: Birkenhead Sixth Form College
15. Adult and community learning provider of the year: Lancashire Adult Learning
16. Specialist provider of the year: Foxes Academy
17. Overall FE provider of the year: Foxes Academy