Avant Partnership - News

Teachers Guide to Apprenticeships

Charlotte — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:34:28 +0000

Breaking News

The introduction of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Act 2009 places a requirement on schools to provide all pupils with information, advice and guidance about Apprenticeships. The recently introduced ‘Quality, Choice and Aspiration’ strategy also guarantees that young people in schools are entitled to impartial information, advice and guidance about Apprenticeships.

To enable schools to meet these requirements we developed the Teachers Guide to Apprenticeships (pictured right). This guide is an effective reference and teaching resource, providing access to comprehensive information on all Apprenticeships available across England.

The Teachers Guide to Apprenticeships was originally developed at the request of teachers and local authorities in our region, with over 500 copies distributed to schools already. It is an extremely easy to use resource pack for all teachers, stakeholders and information, advice and guidance professionals. The Guide provides details of the application processes, entry requirements, qualification structures and levels and progression routes for all Apprenticeship Frameworks in all sectors. Copies of the contents are included on a CD that comes with the Guide so that individual students can have copies of the information on their preferred Apprenticeships.

This is an essential resource in ensuring the effective delivery of comprehensive information, advice and guidance. It will enable schools to meet the requirements of both the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 and the ‘Quality, Choice and Aspiration’ strategy for young people’s information, advice and guidance. It will save you having to resort to a great deal of resource, research and preparation time to meet those statutory needs.

Second Readingof the ASCL Bill

“The Bill represents the first overhaul of apprenticeship

legislation for nearly 200 years. It will put apprenticeships

on a statutory basis, and establish the entitlement to an

apprenticeship place for every suitably qualified young

person who wants one. In too many schools over past

years and decades, apprenticeships have been undervalued,

which is why the Bill places a clear duty on schools in that

regard – and they will have to honour it; we will ensure that

they do not get around it.”

Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families

VQ Day 2009

Victoria — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:04:58 +0000

VQ stands for Vocational Qualification. A VQ means a recognised qualification at any level relating to a particular line of work or specific job role. These qualifications have an emphasis on the assessment of practical skills and knowledge.

Examples includes BTECs, City & Guilds, NVQ/SVQ, OCR Nationals, Apprenticeships, HNC/HNDs, degrees with a largely vocational content and professional qualifications awarded through a recognised professional body. They cover subjects that range from agriculture to accountancy, business to beauty therapy, care work to construction and many more.

As part of VQ Day three VQ Hero awards will be awarded. The categories are:

VQ Young Learner of the Year (under 25 years)

One each awarded for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland

VQ Learner of the Year (over 25 years)

One each awarded for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland Celebrity VQ Hero of the year

The awards are designed to celebrate vocational success and showcase the best in vocational qualifications. Through their award, the VQ Hero awards aim to demonstrate the talent, commitment and rigorous standards required to gain a vocational qualification. The VQ Hero learner awards will be awarded to one learner in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

HAP facilitator Dave Thompson received the runner-up award last year at the first UK wide VQ Heros Awards.

Dave, the only Apprentice to make it to the final, is pictured alongside the awards host Alesha Dixon and Edge Chairman Garry Hawkes. The awards took place at London's Royal Opera House as part of the VQ Day celebrations.

Avant Partnership has secured funding to support the development of your workforce

Victoria — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:55:00 +0000

Provider Train is a new skills initiative that will develop additional training provider resources across the Yorkshire and the Humber region, funded by the LSC and European Social Fund.

The project is designed to build upon the existing staff qualified infrastructure by increasing the capacity of the Work based learning, Voluntary Community sectors and Employer as deliverers of accredited and non accredited training programmes. Building and improving the capacity and capability of training within small organisations with less than 50 staff by increasing the number of assessors, verifiers and other delivery opportunities, which will enable the delivery of occupationally relevant qualifications and provide responsive and flexible work based learning.

The opportunity through Avant Partnership will contribute to building staff capacity to support your current and new staff to meet the requirements of the new teaching reforms. The programme has been specifically tailored to meet the needs of staff within Work Based Learning Providers and Voluntary and Community organisations, and includes the following:

· Assessor & Verifier Awards

· Learning & Development Awards

· Level 3 Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS)

The three qualifications will be delivered to all delegates as part of a single programme. There will be 2 cohorts of 15 learners in each cohort with the first expected to start at the beginning of February 2009 and the second to start June 2009.

Delegates will each attend a 4 hour workshop every week for 16 weeks receiving structured training and development, building portfolios, writing assignments and delivering presentations. Avant Partnership will provide an innovative and creative learning programme that is tailored to the needs of the sector, which will build upon and address any current capacity and delivery problems.

Eligibility

Candidates Eligibility:

Must be employed

Employing organisations Eligibility:

· Workforce of less than 50 staff

· Have a balance sheet of no more than £29.24m or an annual turnover of more than £34m

· Not be a Public Limited Company or Public Sector organisation (including colleges and local authorities)

To make the most of this exciting opportunity please contact Charlotte@avantpartnership.co.uk for an application form.

Each learner will take part in an initial assessment before being accepted onto the programme.

It’s Official – We’re Good!

Angela — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:59:36 +0100

Ofsted inspects schools, colleges and other learning providers delivering government funded training making judgements about the achievements and standards, quality of provision and leadership and management. All Ofsted inspections follow the Common Inspection Framework and inspectors use a four point scale to summarise their judgements, with Grade 4 being inadequate through to Grade 1 being outstanding.

The effectiveness of provision, achievements and standards, quality of provision and leadership and management at Avant Partnership were all awarded Grade 2 and confirmed to be good.

This is a fantastic achievement for the organisation and all delivery partners in such a new and innovative venture.

The following Key Strengths were identified by the Ofsted Inspection Team:

Good Train to Gain overall success rates;
Very good retention rates;
Good achievement of additional skills for Young Apprentices;
Good standards of learners work;
Significant development in learners confidence and self-esteem;
Flexible and individual learning programmes;
Good staff development to support improvement;
Productive and responsive partnership working;
Good arrangements to develop and improve equality and diversity practices;

The following findings supported the judgements made by inspectors:

“Success rates across the Train to Gain programme are high. Overall success rates were high at 82% compared with the national rate of 60%”

“Retention rates in the second year of the two year [Young Apprenticeship] programme are high at 89%”

“Avant has developed a flexible and successful approach to support learning. The partnership members work hard to make learning and assessment interesting and inclusive”

“An innovative range of projects have been developed to make the Young Apprenticeship programmes interesting and stimulating”

Employers recognise the improved skill and productivity levels gained from participating in the Train to Gain programmes”

“Very effective individualised learning programmes meet the needs of learners and employers”

“Employers increasingly rely on the increased skill levels of the Train to Gain employees to run their business”

“A key strength is the significant development in learners’ confidence and self esteem. The programme quickly helps them to develop their skills and become highly valued members of their employers’ staff”

“The new skills and confidence gained by some employees has led them to more senior and demanding jobs with their employer”

“The programmes have high retention and success rates and good learner and employer satisfaction levels”

“Partnership working is well established and very effective”

“Avant has a good range of proactive network links in the local community and regional area. It works well in accessing funding for the benefit of the partners and their learners. Staff from Avant uses these networks effectively to initiate new ideas and share good practice”

“Resources are well used by partners to improve the quality of their provision and improvements in the programmes have been established as a result of Avant’s interventions”

The following comments were made by learners during the inspection on what they liked:

“It isn’t like school”

“They are always there to help”

”The programme has given me more confidence in my own ability”

“Grateful in having the opportunity to achieve personal goals”

“Interesting and enjoyable programme”

”Being able to work at our own pace”

“Having helpful and experienced tutors and assessors”

”The training is really good”

The inspection has confirmed that such a new partnership is already very effective and delivering high quality provision. The inspection has enabled us to focus on continually improving the training and development delivered through partnership to continue meeting the expectations and needs of employers and learners.

The Avant Partnership website is launched…

maria — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:02:39 +0100

This website has been created to promote the work of Avant Partnership.

The new site acknowledges the importance of an attractive and ‘easy-to-use’ website for communicating latest information to learners and employers interested in the work based learning offer.

The new site features an easily navigable homepage with links to:

The site was built in partnership with Bluestorm New Media using their custom Content Management System.

Thank you to Gareth, Angela and Adam for all their help!