Even when you are assessing the apprentice, mentoring skills can be a useful way to support and develop them. Assessing in an apprenticeship setting can seem like a simple tick list of tasks that the apprentice can or can’t do. However, what many assessors quickly realise is that there can be some grey areas in terms of skill levels and that the objective is for the apprentice to reach a confident, unequivocal “yes” for each aspect of the assessment.
By using a mentoring style, you can work your way through the assessment forms with the apprentice and ask them how they perceive their own skills in each area, using reflective questioning to explore whether they have completed and understood the task fully. If they are still developing certain skills, you can also help them identify what learning needs to take place, and identify for themselves how and where they are going to source this learning. Mentoring truly puts the ownership of the learning onto the apprentice and builds independence and personal responsibility around their development needs.
We will now use a case study to explore how all of this comes together when the apprentice starts and continues their apprenticeship.