Published on: October 20, 2020 at 10:38 AM

Update on COVID-19 and EUIAS EPA flexibilities

When we first started talking about COVID-19 flexibilities, not many thought the situation would last as long as it has. The current situation suggests, if anything, there is greater uncertainty about whether and when COVID-19 might impact on training and end-point assessments again. However, we do know that a variety of ‘flexibilities’ do work, and can be used again, should the situation arise. The original lockdown was national, we are now seeing regional differences, and in some cases, restrictions being applied with very little notice. This leads to the possibility that we may be forced into making changes at short notice, depending on the location of an end-point assessment activity.

However, if this situation occurs, we will need to accept the possibility that existing arrangements may be disrupted at short notice. Our Service Delivery team will continue to work with our customers to minimise the impact and arrive at solutions. Meanwhile, the message continues to be that the EUIAS is open for business, and we will work with customers to enable end-point assessments to be completed, and, where necessary, we will work with the EQA bodies to arrange for COVID-19 flexibilities to be put in place.

The flexibilities we have agreed so far include:

Trade tests live-streamed to assessors in remote locations (enabling trade tests to take place without assessors having to travel or be on site)
Where connectivity is not good enough to support live-streaming, recording of trade tests for remote assessment later
Temporary suspension of the requirement for assessors not to be involved in the apprentices’ training programme (enabling EPAs to take place when employer technical experts are not able to travel to the required site)
Technical interviews being carried out using video-conference technology; while reviewing portfolio evidence

If you are interested in finding out more, contact the EUIAS Team via enquiries@euias.co.uk.