Ofsted has rated the Apprenticeship Centre at North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) as Good.
The report follows an inspection of the Trust in March 2024 in which inspectors rated NBT as Good in all five areas: Quality of Education, Behaviours and Attitudes, Personal Development, Leadership and Management, and Apprenticeships.
NBT deliver apprenticeships for customer service, business administration and team leaders.
The Apprenticeship Centre at Southmead Hospital has been delivering a successful programme for several years and in September 2021 was added to the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers. Currently, 58 colleagues are enrolled in an apprenticeship at varying levels.
Maria Kane, Chief Executive at North Bristol NHS Trust, said: “I’m delighted that our apprenticeship provision has been rated as Good. Inspectors identified a number of areas of good practice, which really highlights our approach to delivering the best possible experience for our apprentices, and to support them to develop their careers.
“We are always aspiring to improve and will continue to develop the areas of good practice identified during the inspection, as well as to build on the areas inspectors identified that we can focus on to further improve. This very positive report is testament to all of the efforts and hard work of our apprentices, their managers, our apprenticeship team and everyone else involved in delivering our apprenticeship training programme.”
Hannah Woodland, Head of Apprenticeships and Early Careers at NBT, said: “Our apprentices, their learning journey and successes, are very much at the heart of our approach and I’m very pleased to see the positive experiences highlighted in this report.
“We’re incredibly proud to have been rated as Good by Ofsted, which is thanks to all of the efforts and dedication of our team to deliver the best apprenticeship experience possible.”
Inspectors highlighted many positives during their inspection. The following are just a few of the areas they identified:
- Apprentices are proud to work for NBT, are committed to their studies, behave well, and feel safe. They enjoy their studies and value how tutors make many lessons collaborative so that they can discuss topics in depth and then apply the knowledge they gain in their job roles.
- Tutors are swift to support apprentices to catch up with their studies by scheduling extra study time and additional one-to-one meetings to discuss the content of missed lessons. Tutors assess apprentices’ work accurately and provide them with useful feedback to help them to improve.
- Apprentices grow in confidence because of the training they receive and apply the knowledge and professional behaviours they gain in their job roles well.
- Apprentices are knowledgeable about a patient’s right to make their own decisions without pressure, they reflect this in their conduct and how they perform their job roles.
- Tutors make good use of guest speakers from a wide range of the Trust’s departments to deepen apprentices’ knowledge of careers within the Trust, such as clinical services, finance and human resources.
- Tutors are well qualified, work closely with employers to plan apprentices’ training so that it meets their needs well, and plan training carefully so that most apprentices build on and secure the knowledge and skills they need for their jobs.
- Leaders plan an ambitious curriculum to ensure that the apprenticeships contribute positively to the strategic priorities of the NHS. For example, leaders have carefully selected apprenticeships which support three key Trust strategies - workforce retention, commitment to local communities and workforce development and training.
- Leaders prioritise rightly the wellbeing of apprentices and tutors.
- Leaders ensure that all apprentices who complete their apprenticeship successfully pass their qualification, and nearly half achieve at the highest grade.
Inspectors highlighted three areas of improvement - to ensure that opportunities to develop apprentices’ personal skills and knowledge are planned, promoted and implemented effectively within each apprenticeship; to ensure that tutors receive ongoing professional development in pedagogy to improve further the quality of teaching; and to ensure that most apprentices stay and achieve their qualification within the expected timescales.
The Trust will continue to develop the areas of good practice identified during the inspection, and build on the areas inspectors identified for further improvement.
You can read the report on the Ofsted website.
Pictured at the top of the page are some members of the Apprenticeship Centre Team.