A guest blog post for #HEBlogswap by Dr Emma Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in HE Learning and Teaching, University of Greenwich

The Academic Professional Apprenticeship (APA) is a strange beast. It’s badged as an apprenticeship, which the UK government defines as ‘a paid job where the employee learns and gains valuable experiences’ – note the job comes before the learning. The apprenticeship is the whole position, not just the learning part. However, in many universities, including where I work, it has replaced a qualification which is very part-time. This qualification is known by various names – Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, in Higher Education, in Teaching and Learning to name but a few – and is usually done in the first 1-2 years of an academic’s employment at a university. The same is true of the APA: it takes around 18 months, is intended for early-career academics, and like most of these certificates, the APA can lead to Advance HE Fellowship. One could be forgiven for thinking that one could indeed replace, or sit comfortably alongside, the other. I’m a programme leader for both, and had thought there would be a lot of handy crossover. However, that fundamental difference between a ‘job where the employee learns’ and a qualification is something that needs more reflection, I think. This post will attempt to do just that, and to consider what is needed to really make an APA work.

What you do 

One of the most important factors is that the APA, being an apprenticeship, encompasses everything an apprentice does in their job. It doesn’t mean that every single thing they do needs to contribute to the APA, but it does mean that their work needs to be tailored around the apprenticeship. It also means that they need to gain experiences in their role that contribute towards the Apprenticeship Standard, because the idea behind apprenticeships is that the learning and experience work together. Our PGCert is much less stringent about the apprentice’s employment. We do require that they be engaged in teaching in higher education, and activities A1-A5 of the Professional Standards Framework, to meet our requirements for Advance HE accreditation. However, this is much narrower than the standard (seriously, do have a look), which includes research, leadership, stakeholder engagement and much more. Apprentices are asked to confirm that they are getting the experience they need to meet the standard in quarterly progress reviews, and if they are not, the provider (me) needs to hold their employer (their manager, representing the university) accountable.

…and when you do it 

Apprentices need at least a day a week of ‘off-the-job learning’ (which can include asynchronous – i.e. not live – learning, but must include some live training or teaching). This day must be protected and recorded, and can’t be taken outside working hours or in one lump (e.g. one block per year). The whole concept of the apprenticeship is that the learning and experiences are integrated – which as a fan of experiential learning I can absolutely get behind. On the non-apprenticeship PGCert, students are pretty much responsible for their own time. Aside from attending webinars (and those are recorded), we check in with their progress but ultimately allow the assessments to decide whether they’ve done ‘enough’ work or not. If they fail to do the work, they usually fail the assessment, and they’re responsible for catching themselves up. If their employer promises them study leave and doesn’t follow through, that’s not something I can intervene in, even if that employer is also my own employer. In sum, apprenticeships have much more stringent requirements, and accordingly more heft behind them. They’re liable for inspection by Ofsted (for quality assurance) and also by the Education, Skills and Funding Agency (ESFA) who check to make sure employers are using apprenticeship funding appropriately.

Who pays 

This brings me on to the funding and regulatory regimes. The PGCert is subject to the standard OfS quality assurance regime and everything that all non-apprenticeship courses in England have to abide by. The Apprenticeship has a different funding model. It’s essentially government funded, in that employers who meet a certain threshold pay an Apprenticeship Levy, which they can then claim back if they use it for education and training. This makes the university an employer-provider: they can claim back the money for delivering the apprenticeship (which if they were just an employer, they would pay to a provider) as long as they don’t pay themselves more than it costs them. Examples of misusing funds in this context would include an employer who claimed for an apprenticeship but then did not give their apprentice the required time for off-the-job training, or who claimed for an apprenticeship that covered staff’s existing knowledge.

The implications 

The two problems I’ve just mentioned are where the Academic Professional Apprenticeship, specifically, often runs into issues, and so are where I’ll focus my final reflections: what is needed to make things work.

Martin Compton’s and my research found that on PGCert courses, employees are often given insufficient time for study. If such an employer switched to the apprenticeship model, where even more time is required, without making any changes, it makes sense that apprentices wouldn’t get their required off-the-job learning time. This means that to make a successful switch to the Academic Professional Apprenticeship, a university needs to take a whole-employer approach to ensuring off-the-job learning. Build the time into apprentices’ timetables rather than relying on them, or their manager, to carve it out from often overstuffed schedules. This also means that recording is easier: rather than apprentices having to note every hour they squeeze from their week, there is simply a blanket expectation that, for example, every apprentice has Thursday blocked out.

Covering staff’s existing knowledge is also an issue with the Academic Professional Apprenticeship in particular. Early-career academics in 2023 have extremely diverse profiles: some may be traditiional fresh-out-of-PhD types, some have held casualised teaching or research-only roles for years, and some (especially in post-92s like Greenwich) have substantial professional experence in, for example, nursing or business. This means that they will often have prior knowledge and even qualifications in some areas of the APA standard (e.g. anyone with a doctorate will have a Level 8 qualification that partly covers the research requirement). Prior learning assessment is therefore a key part of the APA admissions process, and needs to involve, again, a whole-university approach. Many of the questions we might ask (‘how much experience do you have in…?’ ) mirror those asked at application and interview: so rather than asking again, find a GDPR-compliant way to share the data (most people will be happier for you to see their application and CV than to answer the same question twice, but you can always give them the option of the latter) to make the process efficient and accurate.

Finally – and this covers both of the problems above, plus a host more – get some decent apprenticeship software. I’ve stolen this point from Matt Hamnett’s excellent WonkHE piece, which states that ‘It quite simply is not possible to be sustainably compliant if you are not using tools developed specifically for the purpose of supporting apprenticeship delivery.’ I agree entirely. Apprenticeship requirements are so distinct from OfS requirements (though they also have to meet those): students must record all their off the job learning, including evidence, they must evidence that they are meeting all the aspects of the apprenticeship standard; institutions must also record prior learning assessments, progress meetings, attendance, any concerns raised (including breaks in learning more than 4 weeks) – aspects that are simply not compatible with the average student record system. Many institutions muddle through with spreadsheets and folders, but this makes the data much harder to access – and also to track. Ofsted inspectors will (rightly) want to know not just that you’re collecting this data, but that you’re keeping track of apprentices’ progress. It’s no good having assiduously collected one spreadsheet of session attendance, another of off-the-job learning and a folder stuffed with progress review records if you haven’t noticed that a given apprentice is struggling to attend, has stopped recording their learning and has raised concerns in their progress review. Apprenticeships are impossible to deliver compliantly and at scale without the right software.

I’ll end by noting what the above three solutions seem to have in common: institutional commitment. Institutions that plan for the Academic Professional Apprenticeship, invest in staff time (to learn, but also do deliver), invest in the right software and commit to ensuring compliance are likely to have a successful APA experience. Those institutions without strong teams of apprenticeship staff will also likely need to invest in those, to ensure the technical expertise Hamnett’s piece mentions. Investment in this area means that those running the course will be able to focus on the pedagogy and the learners, rather than worrying about data – enabling universities, and their employees, to make the most of this opportunity.