The DfE requires all awarding organisations ‘to confirm that providers have secured employer involvement for every learner’ taking a Tech Level qualification or a Technical Certificate qualification that has been approved for the performance tables: technical and vocational qualifications.
The employer involvement does not contribute to the overall qualification grading, but is a requirement that all learners must meet.
All students aged 16–19 working towards one of these qualifications must undertake ‘meaningful activity’ involving employers from a list of eligible activities, examples include:
- Structured work-experience or work-placements that develop skills and knowledge relevant to the qualification
- Project(s), exercises(s) and/or assessments/examination(s) set with input from industry practitioner(s)
- Units delivered or co-delivered by an industry practitioner(s). This could take the form of master classes or guest lectures
- Industry practitioners operate as ‘expert witnesses’ that contribute to the assessment of a learner’s work or practice, operating within a specified assessment framework. This may be a specific project(s), exercise(s) or examination(s), or all assessments for a qualification.
Whilst the DfE has allowed for flexibility in the way that providers and employers work together to support students’ learning, the contribution that meaningful activities make to the qualification must be significant and relate to the qualification as a minimum.
Activities and their contribution to the students’ learning are set out in the units and handbooks. As a minimum they relate to one or more elements of the mandatory content of the qualification.
(Information taken from DfE Technical Guidance 2017.)