WELCOME

Welcome to Level Up, Professional Learning with Aspire 2Be


The Google Site platform has been established as a central hub for storing essential information related to your qualification journey. It serves as an invaluable repository for data, policies, handbooks, INSPIRE workshops, and an extensive array of learning resources. 

Additionally, it functions as a dedicated space for safeguarding guidelines and emergency contact details, ensuring the safety and well-being of all participants in this educational endeavour. Throughout your qualification, this platform will be your dependable go-to resource to support your success and growth in your learning journey. 

The apprenticeship standards are thoughtfully designed to offer multiple avenues for providing evidence. Your qualification will encompass a variety of outcomes, encompassing both occupational knowledge and competence. In practical terms, this means that you'll be addressing some outcomes to demonstrate your subject knowledge and others to showcase your competence in the workplace, all aligned with the established standards.

What to expect

Funding 

This apprenticeship is fully funded by the Welsh Government, meaning there is no cost to you or your employer. However, undertaking the apprenticeship requires you, your employer, and us, a training provider, to commit to the funding requirements outlined in the apprenticeship agreement. 

Compliance

As part of receiving funding for this apprenticeship the Welsh Government outlines, we must meet with you a minimum every 61 days, ensuring we make continual progress with your qualification throughout the duration of your apprenticeship stay. 

As a training provider, in order for us to ensure you make adequate progress and receive adequate support, we aim to meet all learners every 30 days. This is to discuss progress, offer support and teaching advice, cover criteria, and ensure you receive the best learning support available.

Each time we meet you monthly, your trainer coach will complete a progress review with you. This outlines what progress has been made each month, and provides an opportunity to reset and evaluate action plans. These reviews need to be signed and dated along with comments on progress, by yourself, your trainer coach, and your employer. It is vitally important that all parties are committed to this to remain compliant with Welsh Government funding, and ensure you receive the correct levels of support all round. These reviews also highlight any support you may need, and also highlight positive work to your employer.


Commitment

By undertaking this qualification, you, the employer and the training provider must ensure you are committed to the achievement of the qualification. You will need to stay on track with the work set by your trainer coach in your monthly sessions. If at any time you need support, you can reach out to your trainer coach who will happily offer guidance. 

You will need to commit a minimum of 4-8 hours per month to study time along with attending monthly progress review sessions, which can last between 1-2 hours. 

If for whatever reason you cannot attend a progress review session, please speak to your trainer coach at the earliest point to allow time for your session to be rearranged in a timely manner. 


Employer commitment 

Your employer or line manager will play a key role in supporting you through your qualification. As part of the qualification funding, it is important that employers engage in monthly review sessions, commenting on and signing progress reviews. Your trainer coach will also email progress updates to your employer so they can support your progress and understand the workload within your qualification.

Your employer may also be responsible for completing Expert Witness Testimonies for the competence side of your qualification, if this cannot be observed naturally within the work setting.  



Assessment methods

There are many different assessment methods we can use to support you through your apprenticeship. Here are some of the common ones used within this qualification: 

Written work/Assessments: This involves being set knowledge outcomes to research and reflect on a subject area from within your mandatory or optional units, and writing a written document covering these criteria. 


Presentations: This involves presenting your work via a digital presentation tool, talking through the key areas. Your Trainer Coach can then reference this into the standards it covers within your qualification. 


Audio/video recording: These can be used to capture ‘real live’ evidence of a situation or scenario. It could involve a video of a team meeting, or teaching a subject area. It is important prior to any video evidence being uploaded that consent is given by all parties required. 


Oral questioning: This can be planned with your trainer coach, making your own notes and answering the knowledge criteria verbally. This can also be used to add detail to outcomes that have not fully covered the criteria. This session can be recorded using a Digital voice recorder, video link or typed up by your trainer coach. 


Professional Discussions: These are used in a similar way to oral questioning, however instead of asking direct questions from the standards, they involve more probing questions from the trainer coach to cover criteria.


Observation: Your Trainer Coach will watch you carrying out activities within your workplace. Most observations will be pre-planned between yourself and your trainer coach at the assessment planning stage, although some observations may take place without planning if a suitable task/activity presents itself. Observation shows the trainer coach the skills and competence that you possess. 


Witness Testimonies: Witness testimonies are often used to provide evidence of performance; these may be completed by someone at your place of work and your trainer coach will provide guidance as to who would be most suitable. This usually takes place, if there is criteria that the trainer coach is unable to observe or plan to observe, for example dealing with challenging behaviour.


Product Evidence: This is evidence you can produce to cover criteria that are difficult to observe in practice. This could be completing risk assessments or documents you have already put in place within your work setting. 


RPL/APL: Recognised Prior Learning or Accredited Prior Learning, uses certificates you have achieved previously and uses these to cover criteria within this qualification.

Dealing with any nerves

Some people will find any kind of assessment stressful. This may be because they haven’t had to undertake any official assessments for some time, or because they developed a fear of them during school. For others, the thought of going to a different centre to undertake the assessments may seem daunting. Alternatively, the thought of having to sit with people they don’t know might bring up feelings of unease. 

Whatever the reason, if you are feeling anxious, talk to your trainer-coach about it and they will help support you.

Staff at Aspire 2Be and Educ8 are fully aware that many people feel anxious about assessments, in fact, even some of the staff feel that way! Because of this, we will do everything we can to make you feel comfortable, welcome you and put you at ease, whenever you attend one of the assessment centres.

Who’s who

Trainer Coach (TC): These are the staff that will support you with your main qualification. They can offer support with assignments, and marking of work, and are responsible for your monthly progress reviews.


Internal Quality Assurance (IQA): seeks to ensure that assessment activities have been conducted in a consistent, safe and fair manner. A system must be in place to monitor all aspects of teaching, learning and assessment from when a learner commences to when they finish.


External Quality Assurance (EQA): Their role is to review the processes of assessment and internal quality assurance within an approved centre. An EQA must ensure approved training providers are making assessment judgements that are consistent with the qualification learning outcomes and assessment criteria.


Skills Tutor: These staff will support you with the Essential Skills Qualifications you have to undertake to complete your apprenticeship framework.


Key themes 

ESDGC

Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship is about: 


British Values

Fundamental British Values underpin what it is to be a citizen in a modern and diverse Great Britain valuing our community and celebrating the diversity of the UK. These values are Democracy, the Rule of Law, Respect and Tolerance, and Individual Liberty.


Welsh Language and Culture

Throughout your apprenticeship your trainer coach will aim to embed Welsh Language and culture in line with the Welsh Government's aim for one million Welsh speakers by 2030. This could be delivered by Welsh resources or naturally embedding Welsh Culture within the qualification.


Equality & Diversity

Within your apprenticeship you will have equal opportunities in line with the Equality Act 2010. You will have access to the appeals procedure if you are unhappy with any decisions made. You will also be offered a wide variety of support if you have any additional learning needs.


Other embedded themes 

Include Prevent, Knife Crime, Modern Slavery and GDPR. These are resources available to our learners to understand these concepts.


How to reference

During your course, you will carry out a lot of research in order to demonstrate your understanding. However, you will need to give credit to those you take the information from.  As stated by the University of Kent; "Accurate and adequate referencing will help you to avoid accusations of plagiarism". All your work is checked for plagiarism, it is important that you do not simply copy and paste; this does not demonstrate your understanding.


Plagiarism is:

The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

(Oxford Dictionary, 2020)

When you quote other people’s work, ideally it should be no more than a sentence or two. 

It is common for longer quotations (3 lines or more) to be written in a separate, indented paragraph, with the name of the author clearly stated underneath, often to the right-hand margin, as shown above.  Quotation marks are omitted. 

Shorter quotes are often embedded into the sentence you are writing.  The exact words you are quoting, including all original punctuation, should be in quotation marks. 

You cannot copy paragraphs from a website or book and simply reference where the work came from.  

You also cannot change a few words from a copied paragraph, even if you reference where it came from. 

The best way to avoid plagiarism is to read around a subject, using several different sites and books and then write your own understanding of what you have read, in your own words. You can then reference at the end, all the sites/books you used.   

Print out our Harvard Referencing Guide, which you can find below, to help you when writing your work.

But this tool will do all the hard work for you! 

AspirEd

AspirEd is a pedagogically driven, online professional development platform focussed on digital upskilling for all education organisations. Developed by award-winning Learning Technology Company, Aspire 2Be, it provides practitioners with contextualised digital upskilling to enhance teaching and learning with technology. As the only UK professional development partner for Apple, Google, and Microsoft, Aspire 2Be is uniquely placed to provide a wide breadth of focused digital development resources for all education organisations.