Our Highlights from the FAB Apprenticeship Assessment Conference

On 1 July, we attended the FAB Apprenticeship Assessments Conference, which brought together assessment organisations, Skills England, Ofqual and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to discuss where apprenticeship reform stands and what's coming next. Sessions covered everything from national funding strategy to the practicalities of centre-led assessment, and the day gave a useful cross-section of where the sector's collective thinking is heading.

Skills England, DWP and Ofqual: The Headlines

Skills England, DWP and Ofqual all gave updates during the day, and a few points stood out as worth flagging:

Alan Krikorian (Deputy Director for Growth and Skills Levy) and John Myers (Head of Funding Delivery) covered DWP's priorities and the letter regarding funding bands recently sent by the Skills Minister.

Skills England reflected on lessons learned from the rollout of the new assessment plans so far, and touched on how the Expert Network will shape their future work. We were also glad to see mention of the Apprenticeship Behaviour Verification Guidance reported to be published soon, filling in one of the gaps we flagged back in our December update.

Skills England also continued the conversation about funding bands. This was the main point of interest for us: the direction of travel is towards a data-based approach to funding bands, with the new model starting to be trialled from this autumn, though there's no guarantee of changes to funding recommendations this year, and the initial focus looks likely to be on standards involving young people to align with the governments NEETS objectives.

Mat Scarff, Associate Director for VTQ Apprenticeship Assessment Delivery at Ofqual, gave a regulatory update, with the standout theme being a shift in expectations from consistency of approach towards comparability of outcome.

Centre-led Assessment: Preparing to Get This Right

A dedicated session focused on supporting assessment organisations to prepare for centre-led assessment, covering how AOs can integrate this into their assessment design while remaining compliant. It touched on the different approaches AOs could take to centre assessment and the processes needed to stay compliant, with delegates leaving with a clearer sense of the steps needed to work with centres on assessment delivery.

Related discussion across the day covered the practical questions this raises for us: what commercial and centre agreements should look like, what governance and policies sit behind centre approvals, what requirements are in terms of qualified staff to teach, assess and IQA, and what training and standardisation we need to provide. For more specialist or niche occupations, there was useful debate on whether centre assessment is realistic given how few appropriately qualified assessors may exist, and on actively managing conflict of interest risk, including the requirement under Condition A16 for a different person to handle the relevant part of an assessment when scrutinising marking, so no one marks their own work. It definitely provided food for thought!

Assessment Strategies: Building the Evidence Base

As Ofqual's approach to regulating apprenticeship assessment will require AOs to have an assessment strategy for each apprenticeship assessment they offer, a separate clinic looked at what makes a good assessment strategy and how to apply that to our own assessment development.

Practical suggestions that came out of this included using historical data to test assessment method suitability, expanding employer webinars to help employers comply with their employer engagement obligations, and making better use of inferred feedback. On employer engagement specifically, there was interesting discussion towards delivering this largely through training providers, on the basis that TPs are best placed to know what employers want, backed up by surveys and assessor/centre sessions, rather than relying on direct engagement alone.

Our Take

It was genuinely encouraging to sit in these sessions and recognise so much of our own thinking reflected back at us. On centre-led assessment, conflict of interest management and employer engagement through training providers in particular, it felt like the approaches we've already been developing are very much in line with where the sector and the regulators are heading. It's fair to say we came away feeling ahead of the curve on several of these fronts.

That said, it was clear from conversations across the day that not every assessment organisation is at the same stage. A number are still finding their feet on some of the bigger questions, particularly around what centre-led assessment should look like in practice and how to evidence a robust assessment strategy. We'll keep sharing what we're learning as this work develops.

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