Helen Cuthbert

Exit Awards / Fallback Awards and Apprenticeships

Edited

None

Hoping someone might be able to provide guidance or advice. 

Where an apprentice has gained academic credit towards an award that is part of their apprenticeship (e.g L4 -L7) through a HEI but due to academic failure or another issue that leads to them needing to withdraw from the apprenticeship, can you award an exit/fallback award to recognise the credit they have achieved to that point. As per QAA/OfS transfer and recognition of credit policies. 

It's a question that keeps coming up in validation paperwork regarding should they be validated for an apprenticeship to enable such awards to be awarded if circumstances arise. I understand that the apprenticeship won't be achieved. 

Does anyone know of any guidance on this matter because it feels like an area Apprenticeships/HE are in disagreement? 

Thanks 

Helen

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Joanna Barrett

I think this is because the ILR is recording different things to the HESA returns (assuming you make those).  The ILR is only interested in whether the apprentice has acheived the qual that they set out to do at the beginning, and the pass/fail is in relation to that only.  There is no mechanism to record actual outcomes that differ to the intended.

In your HESA Student return I can't see any reason why you wouldn't return the exit award in the same way that you would for normal HE.  In the ILR, I think you could record the component aim as outcome 2 (partial achievement), and the programme aim would be a withdrawal/fail.  I don't think that will cause any ILR validation issues!    

Helen Cuthbert

I guess the concern is will ESFA/OFSTED have issues with levy funding being used and a fallback/exit award being issued if the aim was for the apprenticeship in the first place? 

Joanna Barrett

I don't think it's an issue.  The funding is used to provide the teaching, which the apprentice has had. You won't be claiming achievement on either the apprenticeship or the component aim (partial achievment on the component aim won't count) so you're not manipulating any stats.  In fact, the reason that outcome=2 exists is exactly for this situation - an HE qual where only a portion has been achieved. 

Do you make HESA returns or do you complete the ILR HE dataset?