How to set up a higher apprenticeship (Video)

21 Oct 2011

UPDATED. Click here to visit our Centre for Work and Learning website and view video of the presentations

 A higher apprenticeship could be the best way to attract workplace learners to higher education. This relatively new concept was given a boost by the 2011 Budget which foresaw the creation of 10,000 new places in the life of this Parliament and £25 million of development money. Speakers from Semta, the science, engineering and manufacturing sector skills council and from the University of Greenwich described their experiences of creating higher apprenticeship frameworks at a seminar last Thursday.

Ian Carnell, Frameworks Manager for Semta, set out the detailed requirements of the legal Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England (SASE) which prescribes what should be in a higher apprenticeship. This includes the "technical certificate" element which could be satisfied by a foundation degree or higher national qualification. However, it is also absolutely vital that a large employer was involved from the earliest stages to shape the framework.

Semta created a Higher Apprenticeship in Advanced Manufacture with variants for Airbus and for British Aerospace using higher education from the University of Bristol and UCLAN respectively. Airbus' programme was for three years using an FDEng with an expectation of progression on to the BEng whereas BAe's was for a five-year programme including FD Nuclear-Related Technology leading to a full degree.

Hugh Joslin, from the Centre for Work-Based Learning at the University of Greenwich helped developed an early pilot version of the Higher Apprenticeship in Engineering Technology and spent a lot of time working with a variety of local employers to discover what they needed for their workforce. He discovered that the employers wanted to develop their employees to a higher level but did not want to give up work for three years in order to get a degree so the option of the higher apprenticeship was very attractive.

Hugh was now developing a new Higher Apprenticeship in Business and Professional Administration. Employers he was dealing with were very keen on the University of Greenwich's proposed foundation degree but found they had less use for the NVQ4 which was the competency part of the framework. Greenwich's solution is to create a foundation degree in which technical knowledge and competency is assessed at the same time.

A key point in the design process of the courses was fitting in the higher education around work. In Hugh's experience, employers preferred their people to be out of work for a block of time or evenings or weekends rather than missing a day a week for a long time.

Download Ian Carnell's presentation (pdf 401 KB)

Download Hugh Joslin's presentation (pdf 417 KB)