so as360 is the system which is used for all endpoint assessment activities again we encourage when you are registering your apprentice apprentices on excel online that you register them on s360 at the same time yes it does help support the sort of the independent endpoint assessor capacitor but at the same time it allows you to stop uploading and registering your apprentices and start building those different uh reports which this system allows so as a quick overview before i actually take you into a tour of s360 it enables you as the trend provider to register apprentices in readiness for epa all the key processes related to endpoint assessment and the apprentices endpoint assessment journey are mapped out within this system so you will be able to see where your apprentices are within their epa journey whether they are in the in training phase whether they're in the gateway in progress phase or whether they're in an endpoint assessment the system also allows booking and scheduling so once the apprentice is cleared gateway the system will then allow you to request a date of a endpoint assessment that request will then come into epa delivery and then we will allocate an independent endpoint assessor accordingly so it saves the admin of emailing asking for updates it's all within the system and also from a service level agreement perspective you know that within five working days you will have a a confirmed assessment date it allows you to track that as well because the s360 is also used by the independent endpoint assessors and internal quality assurers all of the apprentices assessment related documents are stored within the system and also the results of endpoint assessment are visible once an apprentice has achieved a positive result so they've achieved a pass or a distinction the system also talks directly to the sfa and it allows for a seamless certification request to be created and therefore the certificate is then sent directly to the employer so if i just show you h360 now this is a staging environment so all the data within this is fictitious and as you can see in the staging environment i've gone in as the lead training provider you have the different dashboards at the top so you can see how many printers are in each status and then you can see how many are actually going through gateway approved for epa how many epa in progress any epa evidence complete so once you have registered your apprentices they will all start showing in this left-hand box around the in training because of the different um filters and parameters within this you can actually break down to how many apprentices are you expecting to go through gateway in the next three months once you start uploading evidence against an apprentice record so say for example you already have an apprentice's functional skills certificate you can upload it directly into the prince's record you'll start seeing the status move so gateway in progress is where evidence is starting to be uploaded once all the gateway evidence is uploaded and the apprentice is now ready for gateway they then move into this section once you've confirmed an apprentice's gateway that then pings over to epa deliver us to say the training provider has an apprentice ready at gateway this now needs to be confirmed and it will then be the independent endpoint assessor who reviews the gateway evidence and then accepts or denies now denied epa relates to there is a piece of evidence uploaded that's incorrect if i just click into deny dpa it brings up the apprentice name brings up the standard and if we click into it we can see what's wrong so beatrice smith is doing a business analyst epa the gateway require components are level three mandatory qualification level three emergency first date at work english certificate math certificate and the gateway agreement now you can see the red boxes indicate what's wrong so if i'll just have a look on the english certificate the rejection notes are showing the certificate is the wrong person and then in the gateway rejection box again it will indicate english certificate does not belong to this learner so what happens there is this apprentice will then go back into your dashboard to show there is something wrong and then you then have the opportunity to upload the correct evidence confirm the gateway and then it will go back to the independent endpoint assessor once the gateway has been approved you can then click into the gateway approved so again if we just have a look at matt leblanc we can say yep everything's good to go and we can see the uh we'll see matt's journey move from in training to evidence complete to gateway approved to epa reddit so looking at each of the apprentices individual records you can see exactly where they are but then on the dashboard this will just give you some top-level data in case you need to report back to senior managers or report back to employers once apprentices have gone right the way through their endpoint assessment we can then start looking and drilling down into the grids so epa passed epa failed like i said because this is a staging environment these figures will remain at zero if for whatever reason an apprentice has failed so they have failed the professional discussion you can request a reset directly through the system so again it saves email and into epa delivery everything can be done directly through here now there is what's known as a knowledge base and i will show you that in a later slide we've got lists of all accounts so again these are just apprentice names we've then got reports which i'm going to talk about a little later on and then we've got activity logs so the activity log is really it's key if you have more than one administrator within your your training provider because you can see who has done what for which apprentice and then if there are any appeals so say for example an apprentice i received a fail grade you can launch an appeal through the system and again that is tracked all the way through our service level agreement with regards to time frames responses and appeal appeal result okay so with regards to the different resources for endpoint assessment you will be issued with a specification and an epa resource pack now the epa resource pack is an apprentice focused document which looks at each of the individual components and explains to the apprentice what must be done to achieve it also includes guidance instructions and sort of um templates that could be used to support effective preparation from point assessment but it is written in an apprentice focused way from your perspective as trained providers and educators it does hold all of the content that is required so it is the one source of one document which is used for apprentices training providers independent endpoint assessors and internal quality issuers there is no separate documentation that independent endpoint assessors will use to grade apprentices the grading will come directly from the information in the epa resource pack we'll also be producing a sample assessment material so that is an indication of what to expect for the knowledge test portfolio evidence locks so again to focus the apprentice with regards to what criteria do i need to um meet as part of the portfolio requirement and then within s360 they have got all the different training guides that you will ever need so because we're in a contract with s360 this system is not pearson owned so as 360 are responsible for the onboarding of all customers and they have their independent support teams pearson will be on hand to support with any sort of process queries or lower level queries but if it is a technical one then as360 have their own support uh support guide so as we can see we've got training provider user guides so if we just open that up we've got things like setting up ps360 linking to pearson as a endpoint assessment organization how to add a new apprentice record how to withdraw an apprentice what does the dashboard mean how do i export data what is the shared documents area how do i resubmit for gateway and if we just click on one of these it actually breaks it down in terms of what has to be done in a in a sort of tick list fashion so it will take you through what gateway evidence is how to upload it what will change on your system once you've once you've actioned something and then when different records will be locked and unlocked so ace360 is a self-auditing system one for a better word so if an apprentice record is unlocked to you as the training provider it will be locked to pearson as an endpoint assessment organization it's only when you as a training provider fulfilled everything you need to do and confirmed ie gateway that the apprentices record will then become locked to you but unlocked to pearson and the reason they do that is to ensure there is a clear separation of activities so no endpoint assessment can happen unless the apprentice has been confirmed for gateway so that's one of the reasons the system locks the different um views before that reason and then when we're talking about the scheduling again there is a guide on how to use the scheduling how to review a booking manager booking what the different statuses mean how to um edit the booking or even cancelable key so again it's the one system where everything can be managed from and then lastly we've got something called knowledge base so again within is 360 knowledge base is where all the different resources can be found so here we've got generic guidance so this is what pearson provides to customers so here you can see there's a process checklist test booking guidance how to update the apprentices gateway details how to register your candidate pearson's endpoint assessment inquiries and appeals policy invitation of paper-based tests guidance for all standards as a result of corvid 19 and any reasonable adjustment requests now if we have a look in the standard specific here in the pharmacy and technicians for the integrated epa you'll be able to see the specification and then as more and more materials are created they will then be uploaded into the relevant epa section just as a point to note if you are only using pearson as your endpoint assessment for pharmacy you will only get access to the pharmacy standard materials but if you are using pearson for customer service healthcare support worker you will have access to the customer service and healthcare support worker materials within knowledgebase so we'll talk about gateway and gateway is the key date particularly for endpoint assessment so gateway is at the point where the employer is satisfied the apprentices working consistently to the knowledge skills and behaviors as directed by the assessment plan so as i mentioned previously no endpoint assessment activity can occur until gateway has been cleared so if we have a look at the level 2 pharmacy services assistant epa what is required for gateway is confirmation through a declaration document that the apprentice is consistently working at the at a level two or above of the standard and that is evidenced through a document which requires a signature from the training provider and the apprentice now in in current times it may not always be possible to get wet signatures so we can accept digital signatures verbal authentications email authentications in addition functional skills at level one need to be evidenced and uploaded and evidence of level two being attempted now i know the ifa institute for apprenticeship and technical education has removed the need for uh level two being attempted but speaking strictly as per the assessment plan that is what is in there so if you do have an apprentice and the functional skills requirement at level two has has has been dropped you won't need to provide that evidence and then lastly the portfolio of evidence needs to be uploaded and again that is in preparation for the professional discussion so it's only when all of those uh criteria have been met that the independent endpoint assessor will confirm that the apprentice is now approved for epa and it's in that approved for epa period that the knowledge test can be booked and the remaining assessment components scheduled now for the pharmacy technician it is slightly different so referring back to what rahman was saying with regards to claiming units we require the standards verifier to have undertaken their standards verification activities prior to gateway and once psv has completed their activities the units on excel online for unit 121 needs to be claimed once we've claimed those units on edexcel online we then need a copy of the summary results so on the award screen on edexcel online there is a pdf button which will allow you to save a copy of the apprentices record and the units that you are claiming it is that document that needs to be uploaded into waste s360 in addition we need a completed gateway declaration document we need the portfolio again for the professional discussion and the evidence of achievement so functional skills at level two now because this epa is at level three apprentices must have achieved functional skills at level two to be able to progress now i'm just going to go back into this record because i appreciate the gateway components on the screen you can't you can't make out what they are so if we just go into an apprentice record your apprentice will have all of their personal details it will be um the epa that they are undertaking and here in the gateway component this is where you will need to upload the required evidence to meet the gateway so here we've got an example of an english certificate a math certificate gateway declaration and then final confirmation so it's only when you as the training was uploaded the required evidence and the independent temporary assessors reviewed the evidence and confirmed you'll then see the status moves to gateway approved and they are now in the epa ready stage so as the system sort of walks you through again looking at the progress bars in training evidence complete gateway approved epa ready epa in progress epa passed and grade determined when we're looking at epa in progress that means that there is evidence being uploaded by the independent endpoint assessor against one of the components once the evidence has been uploaded for all components and a grade is being awarded by the independent endpoint assessor it will then go through an internal quality assurance process the internal quality assurance process will then apply an overall grade so it will either be a fail a pass or a distinction and then you'll see the grade determined icon change green so again you can see at every given stage where your apprentices is at one of the key things to bear in mind is when the independent endpoint assessor has confirmed gateway it is at that point then where you can request a bookkey for the epa to be scheduled and that's known as the booking tool so with regards to reporting ace 360 has two different types of report there is a workload report and on this slide you can see gateway evidence complete gateway approved epa ready epa in progress and great determined so this is just breaking down how many apprentices are in each of these categories so if you were to do weekly reports for example you could pull off this report and it could show you how many apprentices are in those different statuses over a four to six week period so you could see the movement that's going through and then there is an enhanced report where it actually breaks down your grade distributions so it will show you how many apprentices have achieved a distinction how many you've achieved to pass the fail and your overall pass rate now if you're only using pearson for pharmacy services your grades will reflect pharmacy services and your performing sectors will only reference that now if you're using pearson for a range of standards it will actually break it down on a sort of top level what the grades are but all standards and then you can click into the best performing sectors and the worst performing sectors to then find the standard specific data so i think it's really important just to explain a little bit about the role of the endpoint assessor so the endpoint assessor is responsible for the apprentices epa jnet host gateway so the independent endpoint assessor cannot get involved when the apprentice is still in the on program phase or in the gateway preparation phase so the independent endpoint assessor is responsible for planning the endpoint assessment undertaking the endpoint assessment in line with our specification and making sure that all the regulations and standards are being adhered to so one way to look at the independent endpoint assessor is to consider them as an examiner so during any assessment activity the independent endpoint assessor won't interact with the apprentice or provide any feedback the assessor will almost stop the assessment or interjecting the assessment if there is a danger to an individual or a safeguarding concern so during those assessment periods independent endpoint assessor will remain sort of poker-faced they won't be interacting with the apprentice they will be taking notes with regards to the professional discussion the independent endpoint assessor won't be using any affirmative language so for example they will be saying fantastic good brilliant because that is giving an indication to the apprentice of an assessment grade however outside of those assessment times the independent endpoint assessor can laugh they can joke they can build a a rapport with the apprentice so i just thought it was key just to share that with you with regards to preparation for epa particularly on program if you're undertaking mock professional discussions it may be worth um switching the assessor so the apprentice is getting familiar with um unknown people and also changing the assessment style to make it more reflective of what the endpoint assessment will be we do work to a fab working day turnaround for all results um regarding endpoint assessment so just as an example if an endpoint assessment was undertaken on a thursday by the following thursday the results will be available on s360 in terms of expectations your independent endpoint assessor will be responsible for coordinating a planning meeting so again this is after gateway has been confirmed it is when you as the training provider have requested a particular date and time for the assessment the independent endpoint assessor will then organize a meeting and currently everything has been done doing being done virtually and it is your opportunity there to ask any questions of what to expect on the day of epa the independent endpoint assessor will be confirming any logistics and in addition they'll be confirming details of the apprentice they'll be confirming any reasonable adjustments and then on the assessment there the independent endpoint assessor will want to take a pre-assessment briefing with the apprentice so again it's just as a reminder as to what the apprentice can expect i want to take each assessment component for the time that's specified and again just as a reminder no feedback will be provided on that day any assessment decision made by an independent endpoint assessor has to go through a quality assurance process before results are shared back onto s360 following the assessment if you as the training provider or the employer or the apprentices have any questions the independent endpoint assessor is not your point of contact again because they are an examiner all requests need to come into my team at epa deliver pearson.com and then we will coordinate that when we talk about results and certification for the pharmacy technician non-integrated claiming results is business as usual so reclaim directly on excel online for welsh apprenticeships claim apprenticeship certificate wales and then update the individual learner record again as per the norm for the pharmacy technician integrated qualification off of loans that are under turkey net there have been no direct claim status for senators issuing if the integrated qualification will only occur once the endpoint assessment is achieved so with the achievement of the endpoint assessment there will be a notification of results document posted on s360 and it is the date on the notification results that you can use to close down the apprentice's ilr and it is pearson's responsibility to claim the overall apprenticeship certificate directly from the esfa and then the sfa will create the certificate and send it directly to the employer so if i just hand over to rahman now at this point thank you andy i'll let you carry on with the slides if you don't mind just leave it that way um so yes there have been lots of questions that we've been asked about because the apprentice standard for level three um pharmacy technician states 24 months however i just want to confirm that we have in writing from the eqa for the pharmacy technician that the learners if they're ready it's up to the employer to judge if they're ready at 21 months and meet all the gateway requirements they can be put for the end point assessment however as you all know for the pharmacy technician the minimum requirement that is there is the 24 months that they need to have the experience work experience because this they have to confirm for the registration the 1260 hours so even though they might complete the epa they shouldn't complete the apprenticeship as a whole until they've completed that 24 months if that makes sense so yes the endpoint assessment can happen after 24 21 months but the apprenticeship must continue till 24 months and the other thing that people have been asked asking about is that can the learner transfer if they've started on the apprenticeship pathway to the non-apprenticeship pathway uh the answers short of it is that no that the learner cannot transfer although the 21 units are combined if they start on the apprenticeship journey they continue on that apprenticeship journey they cannot transfer to the non-apprenticeship pathway and that is agreed with gphc as well as the health education england so just wanted to make you aware of that we are currently going through this because sir some people have asked us the question about the vast disadvantaging if they have failed an epa and if they've done everything else so we are in consultation with health education england and um or gphc that is that possible once they if they have attempted all the attempts and failed can they actually still transfer or not so i can't give you the answer right now but at this stage they can't transfer is the answer okay can move on uh before we go on to this apprentice support bit i just wanted to clarify two more things one is the level two qualifications that we currently have is not recognized currently we have submitted for recognition to gphc we've gone through the first stage we've just got some questions so just to be aware of that we're awaiting that final recognition it's not so at the moment it's a pre-publication stage however nothing is going to change in that specification except for saying that it's now recognized by gbhe so if you look at that it's a pre-publication think oh it's not a final version do i need to wait no you can continue using that specification um so yeah we can think about the support that we have got available so this is the apprenticeship page that's available and you can link on it to look at all the standards and all the support that's available for each of the standards that is there for providers as well as employers so there are lots of um webinars on there there are lots of um support documents on there as well and as andy explained there's lots of things on that ace 360 as well so this is our main apprenticeship page on the website that you can look at and then identify each of your standards um and the support that's there so one of the things that we wanted to kind of talk about was the this is in addition to if you want to use it we have got uh online self-directed learning programs available on learning hub so you can look at the learning hub which i showed you on the main page the bit on the slide before there are lots of um demo videos on there as well so there are these behavior um learning programs that are available um on the um for on the learning hub so these are the paid resources these are not the free resources that you can access however as you can see the things that are identified in in the presentation is these behaviors apply to all the pharmacy people as well that they need to learn about accountability they need to know about adaptability they need to have commercial awareness because they're working in that environment you know they need to be able to manage their own personal development and professional development in the regulated world so these are additional learning that you can apply to the both of the pharmacy um all the pharmacy learners and any others that programs that you're offering as well so have a look at those by all means the next one is obviously there are other support as we talked about the newsletters before um that are there uh the apprentice newsletters we've also got some um webinars on the 20 off the job learning how that can be managed so um that those webinars all the links are here and then webinars on epa process and practice as well that an ace 360 booking and scheduling so although andy's gone through this but there are specific webinars for all of these that are available so we've put the links in here for you to access all of these support materials that are there last but not the least this is just to make you aware of that we have currently got epa assessor vacancies so we've identified what just some of the things that are required for these ep assessors and we've put the link to the pearson job site where these vacancies are um posted so if you or any of your colleagues are interested please have a look and go to these website to access these and apply we've also got the vacancy for the pharmacy uh standards verifiers and again we've identified what their essential requirements are and these are on the lxl gateway vacancies and i have put the link there as well for um the vacancy where it's posted you can search by putting just the word pharmacy as well it'll come up if it doesn't take you directly to there okay um have you got any questions i've got just a little bit more to go through after the questions but i'll pause for a bit you can pose the questions in the question box okay can you use rpl from level two to level three or a-level chemistry again you have to it's a good question you have to look at the individual criteria so and you can discuss that with your sector standards verifiers that if there is anything that matches exactly and that evidence can you map because it's a level chemistry might be too talking about general chemistry but it's the applied in the pharmacy sector but does it actually map to the criteria is would be my answer in terms of ace 360 would it be the college training provider that enrolls the apprentice rather than the employer yes it is it's the training provider would have to be onboarded by s360 and it would be the training provider that's responsible for the upload of learner data and upload of gateway evidence okay okay i'm going to talk a little bit about the covet 19 approaches because i know kovid hit us really badly and although pharmacy was one of the places that continued and still continued supporting the learners however we don't know what situation we will be in so we have started planning for the 20 20 21 cohort and started talking to off call as well as gpse so gpt have given us some guidance and we will be sharing this very soon with you but the general approaches that we're discussing with gpht for example as well as off call is that what happens if the learner is not able to access the placement you know the answer to short of that is that we would advise that the learners employers encourage employers to apply the same health and safety risk assessments that they would do with their employees with the learners as well because some of the learners might be employed some might be on placement we don't know so if they're on placement they should consider them as the same and the learners should also abide by those health and safety risk assessment to make sure that they can still access the placement but if there is no access to placement then unfortunately delay might be the only option um so but you must document the evidence that why the learner was not able to access that because gphc for a level three pharmacy technician for example has got that the trainee needs to register within five years rule you know so um that might impact so i think it's i know it's not going to take five years but i think it's learner's personal circumstances might impact so i think it's best to record that and then as so that you can have those conversations with gphc so that's the gpac advice currently and then it's um things like if the observations can't be done because the assessors can't access as well because the assessors are not allowed to go in um so um again and the same for the placement before like i talked about the 1260 hours for pharmacy technician is the minimum that they need to achieve to be just able to register so that log has to be kept so whatever hours they can access and they need to provide that evidence that they've completed that two years work experience so um and the 14 hours per week that we talked about before so if there is no access to all of those then unfortunately delay and with regards to assessor observations i think all we can say and the gps agrees with us and of course as well is that you start planning for those three observations as a minimum so that you minimize the access to the employee premises and you do that um observation in the best effective way when you get that access at a time and you can even do things like you know only the same assessor goes to that place for example you know you can do that planning so that not many people are going in so that it's it limits that exposure and again i'll use that visit only for observation not for reviews all the other things can be done remotely i'm sure you're applying all these principles anyway but i'm just going through the discussions that we're having with of course gphc and um again there shouldn't be any case where certain criteria might be difficult to achieve so again that needs to be kind of planned and used of technology where possible uh except for the observation so in terms of delivering if colleges are locked down again i'm sure remote technology was used before as well and it can be used for the online blended delivery and again there are lots of standards um on the gphd site like for initial education and training for pharmacy technicians and also tutoring and supervising pharmacy professionals in training so all of those guidance we will share with you that you can access and look at and also so again centers should continue working with those employers to make sure that those qualified mentors and supervisors that are there and they can continue that to support the learners on the journey and you give them whatever remote support that you can give as well and again last but not the least is always if there is a delay then the recording of that evidence is the key that there should be documented evidence if you're delaying for the reasons and what impact it has on the trainee as well in terms of registration um as well going forward for level three again talking about the assessment um obviously the skills for health assessment principles and these qualifications are observation obviously is the key but again in these circumstances you can use the expert witness testimony because like we've said in exceptional circumstances so but again if because it's only minimum three required you can plan for those but if the learner obviously there are no learners that are going to be completing but for the old qualifications you need to you can consider the expert witness testimonies um and then those key personnel who are going to provide that key expert witness testimony you need to start training them so that they can provide a robust expert witness testimony and not just sign off a tick box competence i should say i know that doesn't happen in the sector but just pointing that out so these are some of the approaches that we're discussing and if you think there are anything else that you might you did face the challenge with or might face the challenge then do please either raise it now or share it with us later on you know um then yeah then we can consider those as well and in our discussions with off goal and gphc before the guidance is finalized okay there was there's another question that has just come up which is about what happens if there are not sufficient endpoint assessors to allow candidate to undertake the epa within three months andy that's a question for you it is so this is going back to if we've got early visibility but using the registration on s360 at the same time as excel online we can make sure that we've got enough assessors ready for the demand that's required we're already aware that there's going to be sort of peak months of activity however by having the data available on a360 it just helps us logistically identify where independent endpoint assessors are based which trust they can and can't go into because that's another consideration we need to make from a conflict of interest perspective so early registration on both systems is is critical and in the standards where this is applied previously i can confidently say that every endpoint assessment has happened within the specified three months and just to add to that helen hence the request and sharing the epa set of vacancies and also i think we've talked about before that within the nhs we can do partnership agreements that within the regions with the health education england so we can still talk about those that we can look at so you're already aware of the local need as well and we can share meet that local need within those partnerships the question is if our local college providers using pearson to deliver level three pharmacy apprenticeship does the workplace need to fill in any paperwork for their peers in approval not for the for the apprenticeship i think who you select as an employer the endpoint assessment organization is up to the employer not up to the provider is that right andy it's that's the only bit that employer needs to do yeah the employer needs to select which endpoint assessment organization they want to use however for farmer said um any contract will need to be made between the relevant business development manager and the training provider yeah because it's an integrated one it's one and the both so it's not the qualification can be separated from epa so almost you're selecting that even before you select the college so you need to think about and that who you want to go with so if they're delivering the apprenticeship then they are technically doing their integrated epa with it okay so if nobody's got any final questions what we'll do mean ramen will hang around for a little bit longer just in case there's any last-minute burning questions but if not just thank you for your time i hope you found it useful and i hope you have a good rest of the afternoon yeah thank you very much for attending and we will provide the recording and we've answered most of the questions so we're not taking anything back however if you think of any other questions even after now you can either use your crm portal to even pose the questions or i think most of you those who are here have got my personal email address as well so by all means or i would suggest that if you've been allocated nsv please talk to the ssv as well so i think it's important that you start building that relationship if you're new to our centers but those of you who've worked with us will probably already know that so that you can they can answer your questions and they can support you through this journey thank you you
