LDN Apprenticeships Achieved Top Marks Across All Areas From Ofsted

LDN Apprenticeships has been helping young people to find jobs they love and start meaningful careers for over eight years. In this time, we’ve helped almost 600 young people to become apprentices and we’ve been a part of the journey to employment for thousands more. 

The team and I are really proud of the young people that we work with and we value the opportunities that our employers give to them. For so many of our apprentices, these opportunities are truly life-changing experiences. 

In the first week of January, we had an Ofsted Monitoring visit – the first time LDN Apprenticeships has been inspected directly. Needless to say, a visit from Ofsted is always a big deal for organisations like ours. 

I am delighted to share that LDN Apprenticeships achieved top marks across all of the areas that the inspectors were looking at. For those of you who know the ins and outs of how Ofsted inspects apprenticeships, this was not a ‘full inspection’ but rather a monitoring visit for newly funded providers.  

Monitoring visits for new providers are different to full and short inspections. They normally take place over two days. Inspectors do not cover all aspects of the inspection framework. Inspectors make progress judgements on three themes: 

• Leadership: How much progress have leaders made to ensure that they meet all the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision? 
• The quality and outcomes of training:  What progress have leaders and managers made to make sure that apprentices receive high-quality training that leads to positive outcomes? 
• Safeguarding:  How much progress have leaders and managers made in ensuring that safeguarding arrangements are effective? 

The inspectors found that we are making significant progress in each of these three areas – the top mark that a provider can achieve in a monitoring visit. They understood and appreciated our vision for creating truly inspiring opportunities for apprentices. 

They were impressed with the fantastic outcomes that our apprentices achieve during their time with us and they had high praise for the work we do to keep our apprentices safe and prevent them from falling into harm’s way. 

Ofsted carried out 63 monitoring visits like this one to training organisations all over the country during the six months to August 2018 and only two organisations in that list of 63 received top grades in all areas. 

The fact that we scored top marks in all areas, puts LDN Apprenticeships right up there with the top performing providers in the country. 

We’re very pleased with the result, but at the same time we know that there is still plenty of work for us to do. We know that we’ll receive a full inspection (the real deal!) sometime in the next 12 months, but this in itself is not a reason for us to continue to pursue the highest quality apprenticeship provision we can.  

The fact is that each improvement we make improves the experience our apprentices and clients have with us, and this is why we’re so focused on it. So, the team and I are totally focused on continuing to improve our programmes, our processes and the outcomes we enable, and we’re looking forward to working with you to make that a reality. 

This is a great opportunity to thank each and every one of our apprentices for doing awesome things every day, for working so hard and for being such a credit to LDN Apprenticeships and to the employers that you work for. 

It’s also my chance to send a massive thank you to the forward-thinking businesses who we work with who have chose to change the way their organisations looks, feels and acts by investing in apprentices. 

And finally, it’s a chance to celebrate all of the hard work that the team and London Apprenticeships does every day. Thank you!