Developing quality apprenticeship standards

A new trailblazer group led by BAE Systems and Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, has announced that two new quality apprenticeship standards will be submitted for approval to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

The collaborative approach, supported by the CQI, involves input from twelve companies across the Pharmaceutical, Science, Defence, Construction, Automotive and Services sectors.

Felicity Fashade, Head of Quality Improvement at BAE Systems said the group explored the requirements from across industry and with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfA). The main objective of developing these apprenticeship standards is to strengthen our employees’ quality competency in order to drive operational excellence across all our organisations.

As a result of an engagement day, and further consultation among the group, two apprenticeship standards (one at practitioner level and one at senior level) are now being developed and will be formally submitted for IfA’s initial review by the end of October. The final standards including the end-point assessments are expected to be fully approved by the end of February 2020.

Neil Burke, Operations EHS Compliance Manager at FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies, commented: “The two standards will continue to be matured to include the skills, knowledge and behaviours to support the development of the end-point assessment. We are all very excited and look forward to having the first cohort of quality apprentices enrolled from September 2020.”