How to ensure apprentices succeed in English and maths with CENTURY

We chatted to Emma Isles, Functional Skills Manager for Apprenticeships at The Bedford College Group about how they can rely on CENTURY to fit into the lives of apprentices alongside their other commitments.

How did you ensure a successful rollout with your team and your students?

Communication is key. During the first month of the apprenticeship, we send out a CENTURY login email, setting expectations from that point onwards. This includes that they’re regularly logging in and working towards their English and maths.

When identifying a lower initial assessment score, we will offer a second layer of assessment to make sure that we are enrolling the right learner on the right course. The diagnostic results are then used to see how much support that apprentice is going to need throughout the programme. We’re very proactive in the way that we communicate, checking in to see how people are doing and if they’re not engaging. We also get employers and training coordinators involved.

 Did you face any challenges with the rollout and how did you overcome those?

It’s always a challenge because you’re asking people to do something new. Apprentices often work full time, and it can be challenging to find the time to work on English and maths alongside.

We are also faced with the challenges of the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, which has required us to teach learners how to study again. To overcome this, we ensure we have good communication and set those expectations from the outset. At the start that’s one hour per week, per subject. That might change if an apprentice is due to come in for an intensive course and sit an exam soon. In this case, we might increase that quite significantly and CENTURY is really good at highlighting their individual areas of development to focus on.

Given that time is at a premium with apprentices, what model of use do you adopt for CENTURY?

We start off with the CENTURY Smart initial assessments to get the right learner on the right course and CENTURY plays a huge role in this. Once they are enrolled, we’ll send out that initial email and communication to the employer, the apprentice and the training coordinator. We’re very lucky to have a tutor who monitors the online delivery to see how much progress they’re making on the platform. He’s brilliant at highlighting the students’ areas of development, but wouldn’t be able to do it without CENTURY. We have also introduced ‘Maths Diagnostic Days’ which is a morning of delivery and then CENTURY diagnostics in the afternoon with the aim of identifying learners that need more support and those that will be able to have a shorter time for functional skills delivery.

Can you describe a typical week for an apprentice using the platform between face-to-face teaching, working, and everything else in between?

We don’t have a typical week per se as it depends on the individual apprentice and their apprenticeship. What we want from them in terms of English and maths is to study little and often and CENTURY supports that. There’s a range of ages in these apprenticeships; we get mature students and students fresh out of school, so it really bridges that gap between our face-to-face delivery.

How do you track the effectiveness of CENTURY and student progress?

We monitor if students are focussing on turning their red and amber scores to green. We check to see that they’re improving and if they’re ready to come in for face-to-face delivery. This comes in the form of our intensive courses; four days for English and six days over two weeks for maths. This can enable them to sit the exam sooner, which works well for our apprentices.

We are aware apprenticeships are all different, but do you think CENTURY has encouraged independent learning?

Yes, definitely. I think especially for our mature apprentices, we really notice that they get straight onto CENTURY as soon as we send the email. You can see some really good progress over quite a short amount of time.

Do you have any specific student success stories?

I have a few. Honestly, it’s been really, really helpful, and the apprentices are really enjoying learning through CENTURY. Recently a student, enrolled on level 1 maths and English, has been working extremely well. We can see that they’re moving so quickly through the resources that we have recently sent them a mock paper for maths, and they’ve done very well. As a result, we’re going to get them in for an exam sooner and then they’ll be progressing on to level 2.

That’s essentially what our goal is, to upskill all of the apprentices to level 2, whether they start off on level 1 or not. We’ve managed to monitor that and, in some cases, do it in a shorter amount of time for them as well, which is brilliant.

What do tutors and apprentices like most about the platform?

I would say the layout and the way it looks. It’s easy to use for both staff and students, and I think that apprentices really engage with that. It’s also easy to give training on – once you show staff the platform, they realise that it’s easy to use and it’s got a nice layout to it.

 What are your plans going forward with CENTURY?

We want to build on everything that we’ve implemented in the last year on our journey with CENTURY: improving our communication even further by involving employers and training coordinators even more, whilst also setting higher expectations and enhancing engagement even further.

To learn more about how to embed CENTURY as part of your functional skills delivery, click here. Book a demo here.