The end-point assessment (EPA) for the Level 7 Academic Professional Apprenticeship is the final step in a course designed to develop early career academics from their entry point into employment in higher education to full professional competence. To understand more about the course and assessment, we spoke to Emily Hill, Programme Leader for Sports, Business, and Coaching at UCFB. Emily completed the EPA through Buckinghamshire New University and got a distinction.
Emily pointed to some of the benefits she saw of taking the course, the help offered by Advance HE, and gave her advice to anyone thinking of undertaking the EPA. When doing the course, Emily said “there's a really useful portal where you could get information from people that had completed the end-point assessment or going through that and having loads of really effective guidance.” Emily said that she was always really engaged with the programme and “because this is my first full time teaching role within higher education, I really wanted to maximise everything that I got out of it and every opportunity. So I was really highly engaged with the programme, really highly engaged with the tutors, really highly engaged with the learning.”
Emily closed on her advice for others taking the programme, “Be prepared to put the work in. I don't think it's something you can coast through, be prepared to be sort of honest in terms of your practice and reflecting on it and just collect everything.” “It's really an opportunity to discuss teaching and learning, all the interesting topics that we cover: things like feedback things like quality, all the stuff around the specialism of teaching within higher education”.
Watch the video below.
End-Point Assessment (EPA) of the Level 7 Academic Professional Apprenticeship
The Level 7 Academic Professional Apprenticeship standard (L7 APA) has been created to develop early career academics from their entry point into employment in higher education to full professional competence, following either a teaching or research specialist route. The apprenticeship standard is aligned to both the UK Professional Standards Framework and the Research Development Framework, and typically lasts between 18 and 24 months. Find out more here.