Apprenticeship Skills Coach

About the Company

Established in 1972 and based in an idyllic Cotswold manor house, you’ll join a team of passionate educators helping learners gain professional qualifications in accountancy and finance.

About the Role

As a Performance Coach, you will support, motivate, and coach learners throughout their apprenticeship programme. Your goal is to ensure students’ occupational competency and timely completion of all programme components in accordance with awarding organisations, ESFA, and Ofsted requirements.

Key Responsibilities:

• End to end programme support
• Conduct the initial assessments and competency skill scans with learners and line managers as part of the eligibility and onboarding process.
• Agree a suitable learning route incl. plan start and end date, training plan adjustments and support requirements, based on guidance and initial assessment discussion, following through to sign-off by the apprentice, the employer and Reed Business School.
• Support, motivate, and coach learners to ensure full competency achievement and timely completion of all apprenticeship components.
• Plan and perform regular progress reviews (remotely and face-to-face at the employer’s location) to assess progress and agree on targets and actions.
• Provide guidance on identifying further opportunities for skill and behaviour development required by the apprenticeship.
• Provide pastoral care and ad-hoc coaching support to students.
• Provide quality and timely feedback on learners’ submitted reflective work.
• Prepare learners for EPA and ensure they meet the required standard for Gateway.
• Act as a point of contact for all programme queries from students and employers, offering excellent customer service and issue resolution.

• Monitoring & Supporting Performance
• Proactively facilitate the support students need to achieve and progress at the required rate, incl. liaising with student, tutors and employer.
• Regularly review attendance, in-course and exam results, off-the-job learning quality and compliance to identify struggling apprentices.
• Use an agreed academic risk register tracking process to monitor, support and escalate student progress in need of further attention.
• Understand and support apprenticeship retention, completion, and achievement targets.
• Ensure delivery against Key Performance Indicators; attending scheduled reviews with the Lead Performance Coach and Apprenticeship Quality Manager.
• Escalate issues to the Lead Performance Coach.

• Documentation & Administration
• Work with apprentices and employers to document evidence of progress efficiently and effectively using our Eportfolio system and in-house tracking systems.
• Support the ongoing administration of the apprenticeship programme, including programme changes, breaks in learning, exam results and support bookings, completing and administering the required paperwork and ensuring learner records are kept up to date.
• Complete all required documentation to the correct standard and within agreed timelines.

• Other responsibilities
• Understand safeguarding duties and ensure all learners are safe, aware of prevent and safeguarding, and undertake relevant safeguarding and prevent activities.
• Work with the safeguarding team to coordinate joined-up actions as well as signpost learners where required.
• Work with the Lead Performance Coach and Apprenticeship Quality Manager to implement new processes and approaches to enhance the quality of on-programme support.
• Engage in continuous personal and professional development, including relevant training and development activities.
• Develop learning support and coaching materials and share best practices, collaborating with other coaches to ensure consistency and quality across the programme.
• Ensure and promote the personal health, safety, and wellbeing of staff and students.
• Perform any other reasonable duties, incl. ad-hoc tasks as required.

Personal Attributes:

• Proactive, resilient, and ready to take on any task.
• Customer-focused, driven to ensure learner satisfaction.
• Strong desire and capability to learn new skills and technologies.
• Confident and professional, representing the school to employers and apprentices.
• Willingness to travel to employer sites to meet apprentices and their line managers.

Experience:

• Experience in workplace, academic or apprenticeship one to one coaching.
• Experience in assessing and marking student/apprenticeship work.
• Experience in providing a service to external clients.
• Experience working in an office environment with several work-based deadlines.
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office packages, specifically Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Qualifications and Skills – Essential:

• Ability to prioritise effectively and juggle several tasks simultaneously.
• Ability to manage own workload.
• Excellent organisational skills to meet deadlines.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, both written and verbal.
• Ability to inspire, influence, and motivate, with an enthusiasm for learning.
• Ability to foster strong relationships with both learners and key stakeholders.

Qualifications and Skills – Desirable:

• Professional coaching qualification or accreditation from a relevant coaching body.
• Understanding of the accountancy sector/qualifications (AAT, ACCA, CIMA, ICAEW).
• Established apprenticeship understanding and knowledge.
• Responsibility for following an apprentice through their ‘apprenticeship journey,’ providing support and guidance to ensure they stay on track to achieve the best outcome.

The successful candidate will be required to undergo a DBS check.