What is the standard and why was it developed?
The Education Technician Apprenticeship Standard (Level 3) was developed because we perceived a gap in the workable standard for technicians within the HE sector.
The Standard has been developed to provide entry level generic technical skills, relevant to all discipline areas and for both research and teaching technicians. This is designed to enable apprentices to identify and follow their preferred career path once they have completed the apprenticeship. This also provides an agile technical career path for technicians within HE.
The Standard, started by NTDC, around 4 years ago, has overcome significant barriers to become approved.
Our working group includes HE Technical and HR colleagues across a range of Universities, as well as colleagues from the NHS Clinical Simulation Based Education team.
Universities who have provided significant input include Birmingham, Reading, Bristol, Sheffield Hallam, Sheffield and Newcastle, however, we have also worked with a much wider network of HEIs along the way to develop and sense test along the way.
Our thanks to everyone who has been involved.
In part, the challenges have occurred because we sought to develop a generic multidisciplinary standard rather than a single discipline standard and because of the challenges of meeting the Institute for Apprenticeships Training & Education (IfATE) requirements which they were also developing.
Therefore we are very pleased to be able to say that the Standard was finally approved on 14th January 2021.
What does the Standard include?
The apprenticeship is level 3, and provides a core set of generic technical duties and related knowledge skills and behaviours. In addition, there are also duties specific to HE and NHS. It recommends that the standard is used in conjunction with a relevant BTEC or equivalent to support skill development. The typical duration is 24 months.
It can be used by teaching and research technicians across all discipline areas.
To see more information on the standard you can visit the Institute for Apprenticeships website.
When will the Standard be available to use?
Whilst the Standard has now been approved by the IfATE, we still need further discussion with IfATE regarding the funding level. We expect this will be this will completed by April.
We will update the NTDC site once we have completed these discussions. Alternatively, please refer to the IfATE webpages as they will publish the Standard once it is available for use.
Further information:
We recommend that you also take a look at the presentation delivered by Caleb Wright at the recent HEaTED event with Keele University – Click here to view.
If you have any further questions please can email us at ntdc@sheffield.ac.uk.