Ofsted publishes glowing report after monitoring visit to Spencer Apprenticeships

The report addresses three primary areas of progress: meeting the requirements of a successful apprenticeship provision, providing high-quality training and positive outcomes, and ensuring safeguarding. It states that leaders “have used their wide-ranging expertise to quickly establish a very effective curriculum to train teaching assistants.”

The apprenticeship programme is effectively deployed across all participating schools: “Apprentices are fully supported by their head teachers and workplace mentors. Managers provide mentors with comprehensive training.” The report adds, “A team of well-qualified tutors are further strengthened by expert facilitators from across the trust.”

Inspectors also highlight the Spencer Apprenticeships programme’s dynamic and thorough curriculum: “Managers and trainers plan apprentices’ courses very well. They study a broad range of valuable topics beyond the core curriculum. For example, apprentices learn about a child’s full literacy journey, not just that of the age range they support.” As the report acknowledges, leaders have designed a curriculum that “is broad enough to prepare apprentices well for a career in education.”

One of the many strengths of the programme is its individualised attention to every apprentice. “Managers and tutors carefully consider apprentices’ starting points. . . to plan apprentices’ studies. For example, younger apprentices with less knowledge of work spend more time learning professional standards and workplace behaviours.” Additionally, “Leaders carefully adjust trust policies and procedures to accurately reflect the needs of apprentices. A dedicated safeguarding team offers effective support and expertise to apprentices, mentors and staff.”

Sarah Kelly, Apprenticeship Operations Manager, said, “It’s wonderful to see the outcomes of all our hard work highlighted by Ofsted. Teaching assistants are some of the most vital members of our school teams, so we have made it our mission to provide our apprentices with a programme that is thorough, nurturing and second-to-none. That Ofsted inspectors saw how highly we value our apprentices is the greatest compliment we could receive.”

Tammy Elward, Director of the Spencer Alliance for Leadership and Teaching, added, “We are passionate about offering our teaching assistants a high-quality training provision comparable to the ITT training and ECF provision, helping align current research and evidence with the Teacher Apprenticeship Standard. It’s brilliant for the team to have the role all partners play recognised in this report.”