Education and Skills Case Study
We are very proud to work in partnership with Education and Training to strengthen their English and maths provision across their apprenticeship programmes. By closely aligning our platform with awarding body requirements and developing tailored reporting and tracking tools, we have helped Education and Training significantly improve their learners’ first-time pass rates. Regular collaboration, weekly support meetings, and a responsive development approach ensure the platform continues to evolve in line with their needs, enhancing learner outcomes and supporting long-term apprenticeship success.
Why Education and Skills Recommends Pass
- First-time pass rates have significantly increased: Since switching to PFS, apprentices at Education and Skills have seen increased first-time pass rates in Functional Skills. This is a major reason Education and Skills recommend the Pass platform.
- Alignment with Awarding Body Exams: Education and Skills’ previous platform showed a disparity between learner preparation and actual exam content. Pass offers question sets and content that closely mirror awarding body expectations, leading to better learner preparedness.
- Customisation and Responsiveness: PFS worked closely with the team to tailor the platform to their reporting and data needs. The Pass development team responds quickly to suggestions, implementing changes efficiently to meet specific requirements, with “second to none” communication.
- Strong Communication and Support: Weekly meetings and open communication channels ensure consistent collaboration. Pass offered “second to none” communication, where Education and Skills value the personal touch that comes with working with a smaller, more agile provider.
AJT Training Q&As
How do you work with Pass?
“We’ve been around since 2015, we have around about a thousand learners on programme at the moment, and we deliver to the education and childcare sectors, various qualifications across a full suite of apprenticeship provision. We deliver a little bit of adult education budget stuff as well. We’re a medium-sized training company.”
What brought you to Pass?
“Back in 2022 we had an Ofsted visit which highlighted the fact that maths and English functional skills were not effective enough. At that point in time we were using a different platform, but there was a lot of disparity between the way that the learners were working and learning against the question sets in the actual awarding body exam.
“So we went out to market, we managed to get in touch with Pass Functional Skills, and we’ve worked really closely over the last two or three years now to hone the platform and give PFS an insight into our side of the fence when it comes to the data that we need, the reports that need to be generated, the traceability of the learners, etc, and you guys (PFS) have been really forthcoming in actually putting that sort of information in place to assist us and the learners. The key thing here is that the success rates for our learners – first-time success rates – have actually increased quite a few percentage points, which is very prominent, and we will continue to use the platform in every way, shape and form in order to further increase our success rates.”
How is your experience working with our team?
“We’ve been working very closely with the senior leadership team and the development team when it comes to making changes. We have a weekly meeting with Pass Functional Skills, our functional skills team, which we employ, holds a Teams call with them every Friday.
“Communication’s great, to be fair, we found that PFS is very responsive when it comes to answering any queries, and if we do have any suggestions, we can arrange a quick call and very quickly – if it’s something that you guys (PFS) can actually do, which so far you’ve not let us down – you’ve been able to implement, and the development team have been able to put different methodologies of the platform together to enhance performance, not just for us but for all of PFS’s clients.”
What made you choose Pass over other providers?
“We’ve used quite a large platform previously, but as I intimated earlier, there was a lot of disparity between that one and the actual awarding body exam. because of the size of that organisation, we didn’t get the personal touch, we weren’t able to offer suggestions because it’s a large organisation where that sort of personal feel to it isn’t there. I think the key strong point in answer to your question there is the communication is second to none.“
Would you recommend PFS to other providers?
“Yeah absolutely, and that’s certainly something I would champion moving forwards. I’m quite happy to talk to any training provider and give them a more in-depth insight into how the platform works, discussions around the first-time pass rate increases in percentages, and the communication process as well. I know in the past with the previous platforms that we’ve used, communication’s been quite poor, but the fact that PFS do actually listen to us and are responsive to any particular questions – then yeah, I’d be more than happy to recommend it.”