In December 2020 we held our latest Kaplan Apprenticeship Advisory Panel, which is an open forum that explores ways to refine and improve our apprenticeship programmes.
The panel is made up of apprentices and senior apprenticeship staff members at Kaplan, and the discussion is honest, open and informal. December’s meeting was held online and was clearly structured to enable us to cover a lot of ground.
Here’s a breakdown of each section.
Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) update
Our Quality and Equality Manager, Sarah Powell, revealed what Kaplan is doing for EDI. She detailed the feedback taken onboard after the last KAAP meeting and actions taken in response.
Here are some of the actions mentioned:
We plan to promote EDI through…
- Being more transparent with data and what we are doing to improve
- Increasing our presence at EDI events (i.e. BAME apprenticeship awards)
- Having an EDI social calendar
- Speaking to clients about what is important to them in relation to this.
- Gaining more insight from our students.
Website improvements workshop
Following this we had an interactive session with our website team. Using the latest in online collaborative tech our web team conducted a live feedback exercise to get a stronger insight into the apprentices’ user journey on our site.
For context, the team created a story of a fictional apprentice ‘Claire’, and how she decided to embark on her apprenticeship. It explored: where she might look for information, how she was feeling throughout the application, how she was feeling during her apprenticeship.
The aim of this session was to ensure that our site can become more intuitive at every stage of our learners’ development with Kaplan. This is an ongoing project and we should see the fruits of this labour very soon.
End Point Assessments feedback
At the end of the session Apprenticeships Partnerships Director, Jenny Pelling, facilitated questions and feedback directly from a few of our current apprentices. This mainly centred around EPAs.
Jenny invited feedback by posing the question ‘What would you like to see throughout your EPA journey?’.
The apprentices discussed areas they felt they could use more support around, in relation to their EPAs, such as portfolios.
Although they appreciated that they received much information about the EPAs, in the early stages of their programmes, they felt they didn’t absorb all of it at the time as their focus was elsewhere.
Then there was a discussion around possible solutions, such as more support in the form of phonecall at a relevant time to help them feel better prepared, and improving the timing of feedback so that they have enough time to action it.
National Apprenticeship week 2021
Finally, and to wrap up, the panel acknowledged the forthcoming NAW in February 2021. We offered up potential ideas around what we could do to make the next KAAP relevant to it.
Some thoughts were suggested around hosting a webinar with polls and questions, a Q&A panel, and ensuring it would be relevant to school and college leavers considering an apprenticeship. Following this we have decided to host an event during National Apprenticeship Week.
Register for Kaplan Introduces: Kaplan Apprenticeship Advisory Panel - Build the Future
If you are passionate about Apprenticeships and how they can make a difference in the professions, visit our advisory panel web page for more information.