Apprentices will soon be unable to walk away from their apprenticeship with a qualification before passing their end-point assessment, in a move designed to reduce the large number of drop-outs.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has confirmed that it will proceed with proposals to make passing an apprenticeship contingent on achieving both the end-point assessment and, if the standard has one, a mandated qualification.
This comes in response to complaints from training providers that, in some sectors, apprentices will leave their programme once they’ve achieved a qualification but before they take the end-point assessment. As well as negatively impacting the provider’s achievement rate, IfATE said these early withdrawals also mean there is no formal record of apprentices’ competence against the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) required by their apprenticeship standard.
IfATE estimates around 40 per cent of apprenticeships currently mandate a qualification.
