Cliffe House Training Academy Case Study

What does Cliffe House Training Academy do and who do you support?

“We’re an independent training provider specialising in early years qualifications.

The majority of our learners doing functional skills at the minute are within the 16-18 age bracket, but we do encourage all of our learners to do their English – especially because it’s relevant for being counted in ratio within nursery settings.

We also do encourage them to do maths as well, even if they are over the 19 age bracket, as it’s good professional development for them.”

What challenges did you face before using Pass?

“Previous to using Pass, we used face-to-face teaching that was one-to-one, so through other, external functional skills providers.

In terms of all the nurseries that we work with and in early year settings, you have very strict ratios to deal with, so it was quite hard planning staffing to cover when they were out in the one-to-one sessions.”

How has Pass helped with that?

“When we knew that we wanted to go down a different route, we decided that one thing we wanted was flexibility.

So that they could use their functional skills time within the week, but it didn’t have to be so structured and also that they can work through it in their own pace. We have found that very, very beneficial.”

How did you find the transition from in-person teaching to online?

“Our main ethos at Cliffe House Training Academy is ‘support that’s always there’, so we wanted to make it as easy and as streamlined as we possibly could.

We found that Pass mirrored that. Everything that they could possibly need in terms of their functional skills is in one place.”

What features of the Pass learner platform do you find the most useful?

“We find it very useful to have our functional skills learners do the Subject Knowledge Assessment on Pass, to drill down further into the different areas for improvement.”

Do you use any other Pass resources?

“We also like the additional resources that you can download. It’s really good because you download lesson plans, questions and answers as well.

We find it useful to have that other format as well.”

Have you seen an improvement in your learners since using Pass?

“We have just been looking through this morning actually at one of our learners who has been getting 97%, so that’s amazing.

We can see how her level has gone up over time from the overview of her progress, so yes, definitely we have seen an improvement.”

How do you find using the Pass platform?

“The ease of it, such as adding students on, is really quick and efficient.

With other providers that we have worked with, it’s a back and forth and back and forth.

Whereas this is literally within 2 minutes you can have somebody on the right course and they can have their details sent to them do the Subject Knowledge Assessment, so that’s been really good.

I think Pass as a platform has everything you need. From the course, to the invigilating and the exam at the end, it’s just very straightforward.”

How have you found the team at Pass?

“Right from the start David was great. He explained everything and it was made very very clear how to access everything we needed.

We have Chloe and Hannah who are our relationship managers. They are always on hand. We have had quite regular meetings with them if there’s anything we are unsure of.

The communication is always quick. If we’ve got any questions they’ve always been very quick at getting back to us.

We have submitted quite a few reasonable adjustments recently, and they are very quick at getting back to us and offering support. It was great because it was something new for us doing reasonable adjustments.”

Do you like the reporting features on Pass?

“We work with a number of different early years settings, so we can tailor it to these settings.

We can look at the learners in terms of that setting, or in terms of their early years tutor, as we can assign different tutors to different tutors.

That is really good and it’s straightforward.”