Foundation Apprenticeships: Early progress and learning insights

This is the first report specific to the Foundation Apprenticeship programme. As the programme is very new, and in its initial phases of roll-out, data is provided to describe its early evolution. It is important to note that FAs are part of the senior phase curriculum and should not be directly compared to the Modern Apprenticeship programme. Senior phase school pupils choose to study a Foundation Apprenticeship in the same way as they choose any other senior phase subject. As it is only possible to start a Foundation Apprenticeship at the beginning of the academic year, progress reports will be produced on an annual basis. In this report, we provide detail for four groups of Foundation Apprentices. The first two groups of apprentices were engaged in the pathfinder projects for the FA programme. The information provided for the pathfinders contains less detail as these were focused on developing the FA model and testing its viability. Data for the pathfinder cohorts was sourced from SDS internal management information. As of September 2017, all Foundation Apprenticeship data is captured through our Financial and Information Processing System (FIPS). The second two groups of apprentices are described as ‘Cohort 1’ and ‘Cohort 2’ – being the first two groups of pupils that have engaged in the FA beyond the initial pathfinder3 . The information for these participants is more detailed than that collected for the pathfinders. In future publications, we will report by year – e.g. 2019 starts; 2019 completers – and not by cohort. Start figures for FAs are reported as at 30th September for each year. They may be subject to revision if we receive late registrations. In this report, we have included starts as of 31st January for Cohort 2 to provide the most up-to-date data for this first publication in March 2018. Future publications will be released in November / December of each year. Any revisions to figures will be detailed in subsequent publications. As we expand the FA programme and more pupils participate, we will be able to provide a more detailed breakdown of the data we collect. Current sample sizes are too small to enable meaningful disaggregation of data and, in many cases, are subject to disclosure control.