FAQs for
Apprentices

Apprentices will be registered with 1st Awards at a minimum of six months prior to Gateway. This is recommended to ensure planning is timely and to accommodate all requirements for End Point Assessment. If for any reason, an apprentice cannot be registered six months prior to Gateway, please inform a member of the 1st Awards team. It is the responsibility of the training provider to update the EPAO of any changes to apprentice details, reasonable adjustments, cancellations and changes to end dates.

We will allocate one of our specialist End Point Assessors to your apprentice three months prior to Gateway. Failure to update any changes could result in delays to your End Point Assessment.

Once the Employer, Apprentice and Training Provider has agreed the apprentice readiness for End Point Assessment, the Gateway Meeting will take place. Your training provider will then upload all mandatory evidence to the EPAO portal. Your assessor will contact you within two working days to arrange a planning meeting, your assessor will provide three dates and times for this to take place. Please ensure that relevant documentation is available for this meeting e.g. ID

The planning meeting is the perfect opportunity to meet the assessor prior to any assessments taking place and is the ideal transition from training to End Point Assessment. The meeting will take place between Employer, Apprentice and Independent Assessor and will last for approx. 45 minutes. The Employer should provide a 2-week work schedule to ensure availability of all required parties. The outline of EPA expectations will be covered during this meeting, including the role of the EPA, grading, appeals, re-sits, re-takes, reasonable adjustments and provides a perfect opportunity to raise any questions. Your training provider will be warmly welcomed to this meeting.

Following on from the Planning Meeting, you will receive an email confirming your dates and times agreed for End Point assessments. Please ensure that any appointments that cannot be met due to unforeseen circumstances, are notified in a timely manner to the EPA to avoid any additional costs.

End Point Assessments will be conducted at the agreed dates and times that were confirmed at the planning meeting. Assessments where applicable to the assessment plan can be conducted remote, online or face to face.

Re-sits and re-takes will be made available as per the 1st Awards re-sit/re-take policy and as per the assessment plans governance.

Please be aware that results will not be provided on the day of the assessment. Each assessment component will be awarded a preliminary grade by the Independent Assessor and this will be Quality Assured to approve the grade. Results will therefore be made available via epaPRO up to 5 working days after the assessment took place. A record of achievement is available for each assessment component via epaPRO.

Each component that is assessed contributes to an overall Apprenticeship grade. These grades are pre-determined by the assessment plan.

The overall grade will trigger the certification process which will take 20 days unless an overall Distinction grade has been awarded. In this instance, the certification process will be much quicker. Certificates are issued by the ESFA, to the address that has been nominated on epaPRO