Sport Structures Achieves Excellent Results in Apprenticeship Audit

We’re delighted to share that we have successfully completed an audit of our apprenticeship provision. As a training provider, we draw down government funding to deliver our apprenticeship programmes, and there are robust checks in place to ensure providers are doing what they should be with the money. This is absolutely as it should be, considering it is taxpayer’s money, and providers normally receive these funding assurance visits about every three years or so, although it can depend on the risk of a provider.

The assurance visit is conducted by staff at the Education and Skills Funding Agency (part of the Department for Education) and checks adherence to the funding rules for all funding streams being accessed by the provider. This audit cycle is one way approved training providers are monitored, alongside other measures and also by reviewing the quality of education through Ofsted.

The way the assurance visit works is any errors are logged against the whole sample to indicate an error rate and the ESFA expects providers to score below 5% error rates which is satisfactory. This may seem like a high percentage, but with the complexity of funding rules and requirements and the volume of work and data being handled, this is actually a reasonable figure. For example, if a learner’s date of birth is accidentally incorrectly input then an error is noted, and errors will not always link to being a funding claim error, it could just be an administration point to correct for example. Our final audit error rate was recorded at 1.24%, an extremely low score well within the satisfactory level. The auditor confirmed that a score below 3% is very rare so we’re extremely happy to know we’re demonstrating high standards in this area.

Ross Szabo, our Senior Apprenticeship Manager commented:

“Obviously, we’re delighted with the outcome of the assurance visit and it was a great experience and supportive in helping us identify what we can do even better. In a challenging sector where providers are exiting the market, we’re proud to lead the way and set high standards in everything we do. It also gives all of our stakeholders further confidence in what we do and the fact that we’re not going to be leaving the sector. The result nicely encapsulates our value of integrity and further validates the amazing work all the team do every day, working tirelessly to support learners and employers in the sport and physical activity sector.”

If you are a sport and physical activity organisation and want to learn more about the apprenticeships we offer to support your workforce development, get in touch here.