TECHNICAL EDUCATION WORK PLACEMENTS PILOT PROJECT

Descriptions

The Post-16 Skills Plan published on 8 July 2016, outlines the Government's vision for technical education. The provision of work placements will be an integral part of the new reforms, because they will be critical to ensuring that young people on predominately classroom-based courses can develop the range of knowledge, skills and behaviours required for skilled employment in their field of study. These technical reforms represent a major shift in practice for the post-16 sector: providers will be expected to increase the availability of work placements for a large proportion of their learners as well as offer more substantial placements, expected to last between 1 and 3 months (somewhere between 140 and 460 hours). We seek an organisation to work with employers and post-16 institutions to design work placement projects to be tested in academic year 17/18. A substantial part of the work will be working with employers and post-16 institutions to identify what good substantial work placements look like, how to go about designing and setting them up and how effective work placements practice can vary by occupational area, to support employers and colleges to make this step change at the scale needed.