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Vic

Turing Scheme and OTJ

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Morning, 

We have an Customer Service Specialist apprentice who is going to be undertaking a placement as part of the Turing Scheme to gain international work experience, supporting teaching activities in schools, and completing Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) training in Thailand. The initial query suggested the learner was taking annual leave to attend this scheme however the employer has agreed that if this can be counted as OTJ they would pay the learner (therefore would not need to take any annual leave).  Our thoughts are that this cannot be counted towards OTJ for the following reasons:

  • Off-the-job training (OTJ): This activity was not planned or included in the original training plan. As per funding rules (paragraph 83), all OTJ must be agreed in advance and documented.
  • Relevance to the apprenticeship: It’s unclear how a teaching placement abroad aligns with a customer service programme.
  • Working hours requirement: OTJ must take place during the apprentice’s paid working hours. The learner has indicated their leave has already been approved, which suggests this may not meet the criteria. The latest query suggests the employer is willing to pay the apprentice during this time rather than them taking annual leave, but they would like the activity to be counted and logged as OTJ.
  • Location of delivery: The activity is taking place outside of England and away from the learner’s usual workplace
  • Funding concerns:  would this be double funded as funds from the turing scheme cannot be used fro costs covered by another source. 

Has anyone come across this query before and if you can count parts of the Turing scheme activity as OTJ for an apprenticeship? Our concern would be that this could be a sizable amount of OTJ that if rejected at an external audit could cause learners to fail minimum 20%. 

Many Thanks

 

 

 

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Steve Hewitt

Para 29.6 in the 25/26 rules explicitly says Turing funding is fine BUT I have exactly the same fears about them doing TEFL and counting it as OTJ... I think you could totally rewrite the training plan, it is a plan after all, they get rewritten all the time, it's just about how what they're doing is relevant.

Shame the above para is the only ref to Turing in the Rules because, by definition, any Turing placement is going to be outside of England... Even the bit of Turing guidance it links to only mentions Apprenticeships once, so that's not really a help, is it?

Vic

Hi Steve,

Thanks for getting back to me.

One thing we’re a bit unsure about is the potential risk around replacing planned OTJ with the Turing Scheme. From how we understand it, the training price agreed at the start is already covered through the apprenticeship funding to deliver the outcomes. So if Turing funding is then used in place of that, it could technically be seen as double funding for the same thing.

Steve Hewitt

Just quoting the Rules, not dealt with it directly. It looks like it mainly covers travel, living costs and learning the local language though rather than the "training" (and, think about it, EVERYONE would be double funded if it was covering the training, wouldn't they?)

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