Case Study 4

Apprenticeships

The programme

The case study focuses on Dorset County Council’s (DCC) Apprenticeship in Business Administration course. The apprentices work five days a week and the workshop/ training sessions complement what they do in the workplace. The training is at the council house where many of the apprentices have their jobs, so it does not feel like ‘going to college’ on a particular day.

The learners

As part of the overall selection process the apprentices have to attend an assessment centre where they do personality tests, a team working exercise, verbal reasoning and work based tasks like replying to a letter. In this way, DCC test their potential and look for the kind of skills that will need fostering as an apprentice. Many of the generic skills deemed important by DCC are thus assessed through the selection process and DCC work on what skills the learners come with and teach them the others.

Developing generic employability skills

The generic skills developed on the course include:

• Adapting to the workplace
• Being on time
• Managing relationships with colleagues
• Team work
• The work ethic
• Confidence
• Managing workload

Teaching and learning

The apprentices are taught mostly on the job.  However, they also have workshop days when they learn to do things like presentations and work on their NVQs, Key Skills and Citizenship.

The following box summarises the key elements of good practice in the teaching and learning of generic skills in this programme.

Approaches to help foster the development of generic skills

• Emphasise the importance of generic skills in the induction.
• Get the apprentices to work with others on small projects.
• Use student-centred teaching methods, encouraging apprentices to bring their experience from their jobs to any training activity.
• Give the apprentices a lot of responsibility to get things done themselves.
• Have regular reviews where the apprentices can discuss any difficulties they may have but also ensure that they have to take responsibility for their own learning.
• Treat the apprentices as employees and make clear that they should conduct themselves in a professional manner.
• Make sure the apprentices are made well aware of which generic skills they are developing and ensure that they reflect on and use their experience of the job to describe these skills in a contextualised manner.

Assessing and certifying generic employability skills

The apprentices have regular reviews in the workplace with their manager and the training supervisor. They assess what the apprentices have achieved so far, discuss how they are getting on in the job and set targets for the next review. DCC find this works very well and is a three-way discussion not just an appraisal as such. The apprentices are treated as an employee and are able to talk about what they feel they need to work on. They are also assessed formally through the NVQ, Key Skills etc.