Sparsholt College will be following advice, from Government, by suspending all physical face-to-face teaching and learning on our campuses at Sparsholt and Andover and moving our mode of delivery of teaching, learning and support to ‘online’ for all our Apprentices until further notice.
You will probably be aware that The Prime Minister and Education Secretary announced that all schools closed for most pupils after Friday (20/02/2020) until further notice, view here.
There remain a number of questions about exams, supporting children of key workers and vulnerable learners which we do not yet know the answers to, but we will continue to ensure our responses are published on our websites, view here.
We have put in place remote working measures for our teams so we can provide continuity of service and support to you and your apprentice(s) through telephone, email, online and video conferencing resources.
The College will continue to deliver all theory based teaching to apprentices, through this period of closure by:
1) Providing learning through online resources – this will include (but is not limited to) our online system Moodle which many apprentices are already used to using on a regular basis. We will, over the coming weeks, look to add a significant volume of new material which apprentices can access at any time to support with portfolio building, completing assignments, enhancing their knowledge and preparing for assessments.
2) Delivering online teaching – we are looking to replace classroom-based theoretical teaching with online lectures. We recognise there are limitations to this (such as with skills building and practical elements) but we will focus on ensuring as much appropriate worked is covered and where appropriate, we will bias provision later in the year to the practical elements of the apprenticeship programme.
Lecturers and other college staff will be in contact with apprentices next week to arrange and clarify their support plan, but the normal weekly routine of off-the-job training needs to be maintained. Where apprentices come in to college each week we recommend that instead of coming in to college, they stay at home and complete their apprenticeship portfolio, undertake assignment work or other work set and participate in online lessons. We will monitor online work and we will continue to feedback if apprentices are not participating in activities or completing work.
Visits to Employers
Recognising the general advice across the UK with Coronavirus has been that of ‘social distancing’ we are moving to phone or Skype based reviews for your apprentice(s) for the time being. We have asked our Assessors and Liaison Officers to make more regular contact with apprentices at least on a three weekly basis to ensure continued progress and participation.
Should you have any particular concerns that you wish to discuss please can I ask you to make contact with your Apprenticeship Liaison Officer. We will otherwise be in contact in the coming week to agree a programme of learning for your apprentice.