There’s little doubt that the world of skills training and work has altered dramatically over the past few months. Many training providers have managed to adapt their practices and deliver apprenticeships digitally to great success, using a variety of online tools. And as restrictions start to ease, and educators and employers alike turn their thoughts to the future, there will be a necessary re-alignment in working practice. So how do you get your Apprenticeship delivery back on track this autumn? 

Times might be challenging for school leaders right now, but it seems many are forging ahead with their commitment to continuous quality improvement, and giving their schools reason to celebrate at the beginning of the academic year.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 was, in modern times, unprecedented. And it required an unprecedented response from education institutions around the world.

Now, over six months on from the emergence of the global pandemic and with many institutions preparing for the start of a new and potentially uncertain academic year, it is useful to gauge how students feel about their institution’s response to COVID-19 to date. How have institutions performed on communicating key information to their students throughout the event? How successful was the – in most cases, very rapid – transition to online learning? What should institutions be aware of in terms of student experience as they navigate through the COVID-19 era?

Enrolment during coronavirus

Enrolment day is normally a notoriously busy event in the academic calendar. For further education (FE) institutions, campus is alive with activity as learners are welcomed in, perhaps for the first time, to register for their chosen courses. Learners are often required to queue in different locations around college to complete the necessary paperwork, ID and qualification checks and have their photographs taken. Staff Teaching teams, Support Services, Learner records and Admissions staff are busy too, ready to support students and answer questions. It can be an exhausting and chaotic day!

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced extraordinary challenges for further education (FE) providers in the UK, with colleges, councils, and adult learning institutions facing a new reality of managing sickness absence reporting.

The Coronavirus is having a huge impact on higher and further education, as well as economies and lives across the globe. The education landscape changed, virtually overnight, when on 23^rd March 2020, the UK followed many other countries into ‘lockdown’ in an attempt to slow the rate of infection of Covid-19.

The downturn in demographics and numbers of people going to university and college, competition from international markets, and high dropout rates means that UK institutions need smart ways to demonstrate and deliver the Student Experience they have on offer if they intend to meet increasingly ambitious recruitment and retention targets.

When you think of education you might typically think of schools, colleges and universities. But, there’s another type of institution becoming increasingly attractive to learners - the specialist and independent providers, living somewhere in between the world of colleges and universities and experiencing their own set of challenges.

Shifting interviews with potential learners to the online environment is something lots of FE colleges are rapidly having to come to terms with, and Tribal customers have been discussing their plans and how they are using the tools in ebs OnTrack to make this process go smoothly.

Did I hear you say Taxi?

Yes, TCSI (pronounced “taxi”), you heard that right! It stands for Transforming the Collection of Student Information (TCSI). It’s a joint project between the Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE) and Services Australia to transform how student information is collected to build a better solution that benefits both Australian education providers and students. The project name TCSI has also been retained as the name of the new portal in which institutions report to, however the acronym now stands for Tertiary Collection of Student Information.