Managing partnerships with providers

Introduction

This resource provides practical actions and insights for employers about how to:

• Design and manage industry placements in collaboration with a provider (school or college)
• Provide a high-quality learning experience for students
• Create an effective partnership between your organisation and the provider(s)

Who it’s for

It will be useful for any employer that wants to:

• Know more about how to find and choose a provider
• Understand how to plan a placement with the provider
• Grow and build on their existing relationships with providers
• Proactively manage issues and problems that may sometimes arise with providers

What’s in the resource

Find and choose a provider

Downloadable checklist to help identify a provider or providers that best match your organisation’s placement requirements.

Plan the placement

A 10-point guide and downloadable template to help the organisation plan the placement programme in collaboration with a provider.

Grow the relationship

Insights and practical actions for industry placement programme coordinators and the student’s line manager to build a positive working relationship with providers.

Manage issues and problems

A table of potential issues that can arise in partnerships with providers and how they can be managed.

Find and choose a provider – Checklist

Download and use this checklist to help identify a provider or providers that best match your organisation’s placement requirements. The checklist has two parts:

• Part 1 – outlines the process for finding one or more providers (schools or colleges) as your industry placement partner(s)
• Part 2 – lists the criteria that may help you to choose your partner(s) – this part can also be used to help you evaluate and improve the quality of the partnership with your provider(s)

Plan the placement

Employers and providers benefit from planning industry placements together around the T Level calendar. These 10 points will help the T Level lead in your organisation to plan the placement programme in collaboration with provider(s):

1. T Level courses last two years.
2. Students start Year 1 of the course in September each year.
3. Discussions between employers and providers about how many placements your organisation can offer can begin at the start of Year 1 or even earlier.
4. These early discussions help to give the provider confidence that it will have enough placements for every student enrolled in the course.
5. Discussions about when the placement(s) will take place can also start early on – the only requirement is that the student should complete their placement before the course ends in June of Year 2.
6. The process of selecting a student for each available placement can begin as soon as the course starts – employers that can guarantee a placement are likely to have first pick of the students on the course.
7. Placements can take place at any time during Year 1 and Year 2 of the course and can be timed to match employers’ requirements.
8. A placement can be split across both years or can take place wholly in Year 2 (it’s unusual for a placement to be in Year 1 alone).
9. T Level examinations are held at various times during the course – placements should not coincide with exam dates and should allow students time to prepare for the exams.
10. If a student is without a placement at the start of Year 2, the provider may ask you to consider selecting the student for a placement that year in place of a Year 1 student.

Key activities – Template

Download and use this template to:

• Go through the key activities involving the provider before, during and at the end of the placement
• List the named contact at the provider who will be supporting you in each activity
• Schedule the activities
• Say how the activity will happen – meeting, location, documents needed, etc.

Grow the relationship

A positive working relationship benefits everyone involved – employer, provider and student. Both the T Level industry placement programme coordinator and the student’s line manager can contribute to:

• Growing the relationship
• Helping the provider to prepare the student for the workplace

Manage issues and problems

Most of the time, industry placement employers and T Level providers work together well. Where issues and problems do arise, they can usually be sorted out fairly quickly, as the table below shows.