Typically, to complete your apprenticeship you have to pass an End Point Assessment. An End Point Assessment (EPA) occurs once the mandatory learning is complete and you and your employer believe you have gained all the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) necessary to be competent in your job. KSB’s are set out by the professional institution conducting your EPA. There are usually 15-20 knowledge statements, 15-20 skill statements and 5-6 behaviour statements. An apprentice will collect evidence of each KSB during their off the job training, this could be during their time at university/college or during training at work. The EPA will assess the KSBs you have gained over the course of your apprenticeship in the form of a written report, presentation, interview and written exam.
Written report
The written report is 4500 - 5000 words long and evidences how you have gained each KSB. Within this report you have to talk about a project you have had a major role in, detailing your significance and what important decisions you made. The report must also include a cover page, a photo of you, a two page CV, records of your continued professional development (CPD) and appendices.
Presentation
The presentation is 12-15 minutes long and should be on a topic/ task you wrote about in your written report. You are expected to go into depth about your involvement, what you learnt and the outcome.
Interview
The interview will be 40-50 minutes long and the assessors will ask you questions on a range of topics that are highlighted in the KSBs. This could be on topics such as commercial ability, health and safety or sustainability.
Written exam
The written exam will be a timed assessment, the length and the number of questions vary between apprenticeships. The written exam for a civil engineering degree apprentice will consist of three questions on management, health & safety and sustainability & environment, to be answered in 2 hours.
What can you do to achieve your KSBs?
You will gain all the evidence for your KSBs over the course of your apprenticeship. Some will be easier to evidence than others in the beginning, especially if you need more experience and responsibilities to achieve them. Any KSBs you feel you haven’t evidenced or have little evidence for speak to your manager or mentor and see if they can find a task for you. If you are at an early stage in your apprenticeship you may not be able to fully engage in a task but if you shadow someone more senior or read through reports you will be able to get an understanding of the topic. Your manager may not know which areas you haven’t achieved any KSBs ib, so it is good to update them so that they can send you on the relevant training courses and give you specific tasks to learn from. Another way to achieve your KSBs is to go on the website of your professional institution and see if they have webinars or events you can attend. This will allow you to learn from people outside of your company which could give you a different perspective on a topic, allow you to network with new people and allow you to get involved in your professional institution which is assessed in your EPA.
Once you have learnt from tasks and gone to training events you need to document your reflection on the task. Your company may give you a spreadsheet to document your training on or an online system, on whichever you use, describe what you did, what you learnt, what you found difficult or interesting, how the task links to anything you’ve learnt prior and how you will use the KSBs you have gained in your job in the future. There could be many KSBs that are relevant to your task however assessors prefer to see you focus on a few so link a maximum 4-5 and chose the most relevant ones. To make sure you are reflecting on your learning correctly schedule regular meetings with your manager to review what you have evidenced.
