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Nick Linford

Nick Linford

Nick is ADI's director and apprenticeship expert

About Nick

Apprenticeship grades last year

In previous Insights I’ve analysed the problem of apprenticeship drop-out, as well as the lack of improvement in Ofsted’s New Provider Monitoring Visit judgements.

But, what about the apprenticeship provision grade that Ofsted award as part of a full inspection?

Ahead of the Chief Inspector Annual Report (typically published in early December) I took a look at their management information spreadsheet, with outcomes to 31 August 2022 (see here).

On the ‘D1_In_year_inspection_data’ tab of the spreadsheet, the apprenticeship provision grades for each full inspection between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022 is listed in column V.

The apprenticeship provision grades can be aggregated as follows:

This can then be summarised as just 67% outstanding or good (5% + 62%) , compared to 84% for adult learning programmes and 88% for Education programmes for young people grades in the same period.

It was also notable that apprenticeship provision grades at colleges were 76% good or outstanding between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022, compared to just 64% for independent training providers.

The findings, particularly when considered alongside the drop-out rate and new provider monitoring visits, make for grim reading.

Today the Financial Times published this analysis under the headline: Apprenticeships in England deliver lowest quality of further education, analysis finds. Click here to read the article (paywall).