EPA Dates

See the requirements from the funding rules:

P159 The employer in consultation with the main provider must ensure that the apprentice is prepared and understands the end-point assessment process. Engaging the end-point assessment organisation can be at any time, but to ensure timely delivery of the end-point assessment, the dialogue must commence at least 6 months before the planned end date of the apprenticeship. As part of this process all information required for the end-point assessment must be ready to present to the end-point-assessment-organisation for the gateway.

HTH

I don't normally have involvement with EPA bookings as a norm, so please accept apologies for the questions, but when it mentions dialogue commencing 6 months prior to end date & all information required for the end point assessment must be ready, what exactly is that? Thanks

It shouldn't impact on your achievements unless you don't report the achievement until after the following R04. This from the 21/22 QAR;

11. There can be a delay between completing an apprenticeship and the notification of the achievement. To account for this delay and to ensure all relevant leavers are included, we use information from the 2022 to 2023 R04 ILR to identify apprenticeships with a planned end date in 2021 to 2022. If you update records in your 2022 to 2023 R04 return that you submitted in your 2021 to 2022 R14 return, then we will use the R04 record to determine your QAR.  

Increment that by a year and, if they sit the EPA in August 23, you'll put the achievement in 23/24, but presumably well before the 23/24 R04. It happens all the time that apprentices finish in June/July, but don't sit EPA until Sep/Oct. The challenge comes when they complete in Jun/Jul, and you can't get them to EPA before early December (R04) because of EPAO backlogs, as that does hit your achievement. We were just talking about that this morning. I don't think we've got any issues at the moment, but it could easily happen, and be beyond our control.

Hi Ruth, thanks for your reply, but i was under the impression that if an apprentice sits their EPA after 31/7 of the current A/Y then the acheivement falls into the next academic year?

Yes, it does (all actual end dates and achievement dates belong in the year in which they occurred), that's why I said "if they sit the EPA in August 23, you'll put the achievement in 23/24", but it doesn't mean you don't get the achievement at all, it just gets pushed into the next year. So yes, it does affect your achievements in terms of which year they fall into, but you don't get a withdrawal, or never get your achievement at all.