New Apprenticeship Standard – help needed!

Print Solutions

The BPIF is committed to ensuring that the sector has high quality modern apprenticeships in place, to ensure employers can attract, retain, and develop the staff they need now and for the future. The Print Technician Apprenticeship Standard is a key apprenticeship programme for the training of skilled print staff, without which the sector would not be able to offer important print apprenticeships.

Having recently developed and secured approval for the Print Technician Standard, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) announced that it was conducting a review of a number of standards and that the Print Technician Standard was part of this. The BPIF soon after received confirmation that whilst the standard was ‘sufficient’, the format had to be brought in line with new requirements.

An apparently straightforward addition of duties to the standard became a much more comprehensive full review of the knowledge, skills and behaviours statements, and their associated grading descriptors. IfATE has been rigorous in the application of the new requirements and whilst some were expected (around equality, diversity and inclusion and sustainability), some around the more technical aspects of the standard were not. The requirements for generic statements in the grading descriptors has required the BPIF to increase the skill level requirement of the assessors put in place by the End Point Assessment organisation, whilst feedback from employers and training providers has led to adding a merit to the achievement list for apprentices.

The consortium, which is led by the chair, James Buffoni of Ryedale Group, the vice chair Ian Wilton of CDS, supported by the BPIF, has worked hard to deliver a standard which meets the full requirements of IfATE whilst supporting our industry in the development of highly skilled apprentices.

The print technician plays a key role in all your businesses, and this standard is designed to qualify learner apprentices to level 3, making them invaluable. Without this standard, there would be no Print Level 3 apprenticeships for the sector – the industry is proud of the high quality training and development that it offers, underpinned by key apprenticeship standards, with this one being particularly important, so it is important that we get it right.

The BPIF needs your input to ensure that it has captured fully the knowledge and skills requirements for this role and identified correctly how they need to be assessed.

The Print Technician Occupational Standard can be found here and the Print Technician End Point Assessment Plan can be found here.

Please take the time to review and feed back to the BPIF any comments that you may have. Your input is invaluable to this process, and the organisation greatly appreciates your time and comments.

Please send all feedback to ursula.daly@bpif.org.uk by Friday 09/06/23.