What is it like to be a learner with this provider?
“Apprentices love their jobs and enjoy learning from industry experts, and knowledgeable development coaches and line managers. Apprentices welcome the precise feedback on their work, and this encourages them to produce a high standard of work that helps their employers and clients. Apprentices become competent digital marketers and content producers for businesses and entertainment venues. They value the highly effective support and guidance from staff and employers.”
This is the opening judgement of our Ofsted Report published in November 2019. Anyone can read the inspection report. It takes 5 minutes. https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50127003
It’s a succinct summary of 3 days of intensive scrutiny by 4 trained Ofsted inspectors who look at all aspects of our education provision. They spend more time talking with learners and employers than they do with our team. They want to find out if learners really are making progress on their apprenticeship and what they are going on to do.
The report continues:
“Apprentices consider an apprenticeship to be their preferred option compared to a university degree, as they gain extensive knowledge of the creative industry. They become versatile, with a strong knowledge, set of skills and work ethic, and demonstrate excellent team working. They become highly confident in their ability to secure broad-ranging work assignments. Most apprentices move into rewarding jobs and careers, or into higher education.”
The inspectors praised many aspects of the quality of our teaching, learning and assessment and how we work closely with employers:
“Development coaches are highly skilled and experienced professionals from their field. They work very closely with the employers to design a curriculum that develops apprentices’ knowledge of the markets, consumer behaviour and technical skills to enable them to work in the sector. Coaches work very flexibly with the employers to arrange the order of curriculum and assignments to suit the business needs.“
This is resulting in high quality work that the inspectors could see was adding real value to the employer’s business.
“The standards of apprentices’ work are high in most cases. Digital marketer apprentices have developed highly imaginative campaigns for clients on a professional networking portal and a photograph-based social media platform to promote products, concepts and businesses.“
Our specialism in the creative, digital and marketing sectors runs throughout everyone we do: from the jobs apprentices end up doing to the careers education they get before they even start on the programme.
“The director runs high-quality weekly information and careers guidance. In these sessions, apprentices gain a detailed insight into what it is like to work in the sector as well as the range of career opportunities.”
What this means for you as an employer, potential apprentice, parent or education professional is that you can trust us to do a good job. Of course, there are a few aspects we need to improve upon. This is a brand-new Inspection Framework and all schools, colleges and Independent Providers are still getting to grips with. By the time our next inspection comes around we’ll have built on the strong foundation we’ve established and corrected the few issues that the inspection brought to our attention. Like any good feedback process, it tells you what you’re doing well and what you can do even better.
This is, after all, exactly what we do.
“Development coaches and employers provide swift and constructive feedback to the apprentices on their strengths and areas for improvement. ….
Apprentices grow in confidence. Their communication skills improve substantially as they grow into their roles swiftly. For example, a junior content producer apprentice used his digital content knowledge about video editing techniques to work on live broadcasts.”
To find out more about how we can support your apprenticeship programme, please get in touch.