Completing your apprenticeship

Gateway to completion

Once you’ve completed your on programme training you will go through gateway to completion. This is where we agree with you and your line manager that you have acquired the knowledge, skills and behaviours set out in the apprenticeship standard and are ready to undertake your final assessment.

Apprenticeship assessment

Apprenticeship assessment is the process for you to demonstrate to a third-party assessor that you have acquired the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSB’s) set out in the apprenticeship standard.

The assessment will be carried out by an impartial Assessment Organisation, which takes responsibility for the assessment of the apprentice against the requirements of their standard.

Your assessment

During your assessment you will complete the following:

This EPA method includes 2 component(s):

  • a project with a project output
  • a presentation with questions and answers.

A project proposal involves completing a relevant and defined piece of work that has a real business benefit. The project proposal may be based on one or a combination of the following:

  • a current or completed policy initiative
  • a new policy initiative
  • a significant change to an existing policy initiative
  • a policy influencing strategy
  • an implementation plan
  • a post implementation review
  • a strategy for consultation

The Project proposal will include:

  • a project introduction the scope of the project (including key performance indicators)
  • a project plan
  • project research and findings project outcomes and how these outcomes were achieved
  • recommendations and project conclusions.

The assessment method is the production of a project proposal, presentation and questioning. The project proposal is completed after the apprentice has gone through the gateway.

This will be created after you have gone through gateway, apart from the initial research to inform the project proposal scope. You will also prepare and deliver a presentation that will be followed by questioning from the independent assessor.

The presentation with question and answer session will last 45 minutes, with typically 20 minutes for the presentation and 25 minutes for questions.

A 90 minute structured discussion with an independent assessor to explore aspects of your work, including how it was carried out and to test your application of the knowledge, skills and behaviours in the standard.

During your apprenticeship you will create a portfolio of evidence that will underpin this discussion. It will typically contain 18 discrete pieces of evidence, mapped against the KSBs.

There are templates and guidance documents available in OneFile under Resources/Policy Officer

Top tips

Be Effective

For your presentation, put the criteria you think each slide covers in the notes pane. That will help you to check you have covered all the necessary criteria by the end of the presentation. That also shows to the examiners what’s covered by each slide (they will have a copy of your slides in advance of your presentation).

Be Organised

For the professional discussion, you can bring your portfolio into the session, or have it on your computer in virtual sessions. It can be useful to use a detailed portfolio ‘contents list’ (such as the Portfolio Evidence Locator/Summary you’ll complete before submitting) to give you a quick, at-a-glance view of your evidence examples That will help you be ready to answer questions promptly.