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Jessica Fowler, Client Relationship Manager at Innovate Awarding, and Ian Jarvis, Managing Director at Skilltech Solutions, delivered an interactive workshop on ‘How to Improve Success Rates using Data and Reporting’ at the Annual Apprenticeship Conference 2022.
Our aim, in collaboration with our workshop participants, was to explore how value can be harnessed from End-point Assessment Organisation (EPAO) data to support continuous improvements through open sharing of metrics, measures and comparisons to identify key areas that require greater focus.
This is what we discovered...
DISCUSSION
Ian opened the discussion by talking through:
- The intended purpose of reporting and questioned if all reports serve the users’ needs effectively.
- When reports shouldn’t be reports, especially when the data is available on-demand.
- The benefits of seeing data needed for both day-to-day operations and longer-term trend analysis in a live, overview, easy to access and consistent manner.
Participants comprising Training providers and Employers were then invited to share their current challenges around data and outcomes, along with suggested solutions for addressing the issues identified. We pooled together the contributions and reviewed each one before selecting the most prevalent themes to explore further.
We then shared some insights into the types of data that we, as an EPAO, have available and talked through how defining the right metrics, and analysing trends and key areas that require focus can be used to better inform the success of end-point assessment (EPA).
FINDINGS
Challenges faced by apprenticeship providers with EPA data
Most responses highlighted issues that simply related to accessing the data. Other issues included the timeliness of the data, availability of the data to the right people, and accuracy, relevance, visibility and validity of the data.
Here at Innovate Awarding, we use epaPRO. The edtech platform enables easy access to the data you need, whenever and wherever required. It has a user-friendly reporting dashboard that allows you to view all key data such as the number of your apprentices currently in EPA in one place and on-demand. Detailed reports drilling further into specific areas can be run and scheduled by anyone that needs to view them. We know how to streamline the data to make it useable, whilst decomplicating the process.
Our dedicated Client Relationship Team are on hand to support you in getting this invaluable data in the right way, at the right time, to the right people so that it serves its intended purpose.
Challenges relating to outcomes
The majority of issues that were identified by workshop participants related to timescales, in particular getting results in a suitable and steady timeframe.
We are practitioners of best practice and as a quality-driven EPAO, we strive to make results available not only quickly, but with consistent detail on passes and failures. We have a carefully managed internal process so training providers, employers and most importantly, apprentices, can learn the outcome and use the feedback to support ongoing improvement.
Furthermore, we can help you spot trends in fail outcomes, for instance if an apprentice is consistently performing better in one component compared to others, that can be flagged, which can help to address problems early on.
What did they want that they weren’t getting?
Comparisons and communication were the overriding themes from most responses with the latter surprisingly dominating despite not relating to the data itself.
Participants voiced concerns about under-par communication with their EPAO and felt they needed more support, better training, and comfort in knowing that they can just pick up the phone, talk to a human and not have to wait for a response by email within a set SLA.
Participants also wanted to be able to benchmark their apprentices against those of other employers, and to compare the achievement rates of different EPAOs for specific standards.
We believe comparisons are key to understanding trends, identifying gaps and areas of concern, and being able to inform what needs to be worked on. We can share anonymised data insights that sit behind EPA. We have a wealth of data spanning 150+ Training Providers and 25,000 Apprentices, which we can tap into to create a useful picture of the industry average that allows you to compare individual, or overall standard outcomes to.
We also believe that your EPAO should be there to work with you, for you, providing accessible support and guiding you through all aspects of the assessment journey - from signposting you to information you cannot find or training on how to submit gateways, to what a distinction EPA report or portfolio might look like or just to have a chat for some support. That is what we are here for.
CONCLUSION
End Point Assessment Organisations have a wealth of data and reporting methods that can help you focus on the right areas to improve your success rates if the data is accessible, usable, and shared. EPAOs should be using data to both their own and your advantage.
Successful apprenticeship outcomes symbolise the toil and commitment from the apprentice and provider. Whilst we, as an EPAO, cannot influence the outcome of assessments, we can share knowledge, information, data, and insights to support improvements wherever possible so that together, we can work towards our shared ambition of seeing apprentices achieve positive outcomes.
If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help you, call 0117 314 2800 or email contactus@innovateawarding.org
THANK YOU
We would like to thank the delegates who participated in our workshop session and for their contributions. It was lovely to see advice and support shared between delegates from different organisations to help improve as a collective.
This was a perfect example of the message we wanted to really drive - that where useful knowledge, information, data, and insights are available to be shared, they absolutely should be shared.
We hope that you found it as insightful as we did.
