New flexibilities survey launches

A new survey on the COVID-19 flexibilities has been launched to give everyone across the apprenticeship sector the chance to share their views.

The Institute is calling on employers, apprentices, end-point assessment organisations, training providers and other interested parties to take the opportunity to have their say.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Institute has helped keep apprenticeships going by introducing flexibilities, which affect the way end-point assessment (EPA) can be carried out.

We want to know how these apprenticeship flexibilities have worked and what we can learn from them. This information will be used to plan for the future, beyond the current pandemic.

The survey should take 5 to 10 minutes and is open until Friday 23 April.

An Institute spokesperson said: “We really want to hear from as many people as possible on what can be learnt from the apprenticeship flexibilities.

“We will listen carefully to every viewpoint and consider how we can help the apprenticeship sector to emerge from the ongoing challenge we all face in a positive way.

“We appreciate this remains a very busy and difficult time, but we hope that people can find 10 minutes to help us better understand how the flexibilities have worked in practice.”

The current flexibilities are in place until at least the end of August and the Institute will provide at least three-months-notice of any decision to withdraw a flexibility.

What is an apprenticeship flexibility?

These are time-limited changes to how apprenticeship end-point assessments can be carried out. These were introduced by the Institute during the COVID-19 pandemic to enable apprenticeship assessment to continue during lockdowns.

There are two types:

1. Those that apply to many or all apprenticeships and change how an EPA assessment is done (for example, observing an apprentice remotely instead of in-person).
2. Those that apply to specific apprenticeships and replace an EPA assessment method (for example, using an interview instead of an observation). We call these discretions.

Find out more about the Institute’s flexibilities.