Hired or fired – deciding the fate of the apprentice

Day in the life with Janine Robbie, end point assessor

There are devils and angels on your shoulder with this job

As debates about levies, funding rules and quangos rage on, assessors working for England’s 280 end-point assessment organisations quietly keep the apprenticeship system ticking over.

They are the gatekeepers who ensure apprentices are ready for the workforce. Yet their work observing, questioning and making decisions that shape careers can go largely unnoticed.

Freelance assessor Janine Robb, herself a former apprentice, reveals her life is a balancing act: she’s a cheerleader for her apprentices while holding them to account, and once back home is there for her family while juggling that day’s admin.

Robb, who lives in Wakefield, West Yorks, with husband Matt and 15-year-old daughter Lila, tells Jessica Hill what a busy working day looks like as an assessor in retail, sales and building supplies.

End point assessor Janine Robb second from left her husband Matt and two daughters

5am

People rarely see what I do so nobody understands my job – even my husband Matt doesn’t. So I compare it to being a driving test examiner, but for apprentices.

Normally my assessments don’t start until 9am, but builders’ merchants open early and today I’ve got an assessment booked at 7am for a level-two trade supplier apprentice.

Sometimes I’ve stayed up late working until the early hours doing admin. I built my work up from nothing and had some really good years, but then worked really hard to replicate that success. I’m getting to a point now where I know what work I should refuse, but early on I said yes to as much as I could. You’re trying to please everybody, and you just can’t.

End point assessor Janine Robb

It’s a blessing and a curse, being self-employed. In this game, because it’s my name on the assessment, I can’t subcontract to anyone. We’re paid fairly but you can almost get greedy because you see what you can potentially earn.

I feed my two cats and grab a protein coffee before driving to the builders’ merchant, which could be two hours away.

When an assessment is on the other side of the country I’ll stay over the night before, so I’m not racing to get there on time. I know I’ll be outdoors so I put on my woolly hat, sneakers, protective trousers and PPE.

7am

I like to arrive 45 minutes before my appointment time. Meeting the apprentice is the highlight of my working day, building a rapport and finding out about who they are.

I do a warm-up for half an hour to remind them what the criteria will be.

First, I do a three-hour observation – watching the apprentice operating heavy lifting machinery, driving a forklift, dealing with customers and selling products. The biggest mistake the apprentice makes is not putting themselves in front of customers enough, so if they’re behind a counter, they tend to stay there, even though I can see there’s a customer in the yard. Thankfully, they don’t often make mistakes on health and safety.

It can be very busy for half an hour, then it will go dead, so you’re chatting to them in the meantime about their families and what they did before this. There’s often quite a lot of banter in a builders’ merchant and you’re laughing along.

10am

Now there’s a one-hour knowledge test and an hour-long professional discussion.

I have a retail client who has been putting through lots of women. The industry is saturated by men so it’s lovely to see that.

Normally the apprentices are school leavers, but bigger companies using the apprenticeship levy might pop on current members of staff to upskill them.

Since Covid we see a lot more reasonable adjustments and special considerations for social anxiety – the young people get overwhelmed. That generation has not had the same exposure from sitting exams and learning life skills, so you do have to coax them and be kind.

I always tell them, “I’d feel the same way as you if I was in an exam. Everybody gets anxious.” I make them realise I’m human and I’m not there to trip them up.

But I cannot lead them. It’s a difficult line. I do feel external pressure to pass them. There are devils and angels on your shoulder with this job.

When I meet them I instinctively want them to pass, regardless of whether they get upset or are very strong. But if they don’t meet the criteria, they don’t meet the criteria. I’ve come from a teaching background where I want to pull people up to give them praise. You can’t do that, but you can still smile.

I have an affinity with apprentices because I started out as a beauty apprentice myself at 16. I fell pregnant during my apprenticeship but I still finished the programme. It was the best thing I ever did. When my eldest daughter decided she wanted to go to university, I was like, ‘Oh – don’t you want to do an apprenticeship?’

Midday

Janine Robb on the electric bike she rode regularly until a recent accident compelled her to sell it

I don’t eat much for lunch, maybe just cheese with crackers, a protein shake or a peach. Two years ago I had a gastric sleeve fitted in Turkey and since then I’ve lost six stone. Because I’m in a sedentary job I found I just couldn’t lose the weight and my lack of body confidence impacted everything.

Now, people say I look like a different person. I don’t regret it, although it’s hard. We often used to go out with friends for dinner, and that’s changed because I can’t really enjoy a full meal now. Some foods repeat on you, so during the week I probably don’t eat enough because I’m careful, just to make sure I’m there for my apprentices.

2pm

I get home and my mum and dad nip over for a coffee. I can spare about 10 minutes to chat, but the organisation of my diaries is nearing obsession now. I can’t do my job any other way – I have to be on the ball.

I don’t use AI yet butpeople outside the industry have said to me it could be helpful in writing reports and organising my day. I’m very set in my ways. We also have to be very careful that if an apprentice has written a report using AI, it has demonstrated their own knowledge, not the AI’s knowledge.

My husband Matt, who is a tiler, is home by 4pm, and then his working day is over, which is a different world to mine. His knees and wrists are hurting so he can’t do tiling forever. I see my job as an opportunity to earn as much money as possible, so if he’s got a dead week it doesn’t matter too much to us.

4pm

Janine Robb and her family

I’ve got an online level-four sales executive assessment, so I make sure I look presentable, grab my laptop and go to my office which is in a little alcove in my bedroom. I make sure family members know not to come in, then I’ll start the Teams call.

These apprentices are usually very confident young guys – very different to my morning clientele.

The assessments for office-based jobs are now done remotely, but it’s crazy to think that before Covid they were all done face to face and I was always on the road.

Although I don’t miss driving, I do miss those visits. With the remote assessments you don’t meet the apprentice’s colleagues and manager, who would usually spend half an hour telling you how great that apprentice was. You’d get a real flavour for what they did.

I did team leader assessments for Fox’s Biscuits, in Batley. They’d take me on a tour of the factory every time and I absolutely loved it. When it’s remote, you don’t see where they work.

The sales executive presents a sales pitch presentation to you and then you ask questions, and they give anecdotal examples. It’s very different to the trade supplier assessment I did in the morning because you’re not watching them doing their job.

It’s interesting and I learn lots about how different companies operate – sometimes companies I’m a customer of. I used to do lots of assessments for retail leadership, manager and team leader programmes and loved visiting the big supermarkets because they’re all competing. One’s always trying to get ahead of the others on technology or promotions.

When she gets time off Janine Robb likes to go skiing in Austria and visit Lanzarote

6pm

I might take my daughter to cheerleading or football sessions, or go to a personal training session with some friends. I feel guilty if I’m doing anything for myself but I know it’s important to do that. None of the companies I work for push me into anything, it’s ultimately my choice to work as much as I do.

Then I make dinner for my family. I get Hello Fresh deliveries which makes life easier, not having to think about food shopping. Cooking is not Matt’s strong point.

I’m usually on the laptop after that, but only doing simple prep tasks I can do while half watching a TV programme with my family. But there are certain programmes that I don’t have my laptop out for because I like to give them my full attention, like House of the Dragon and Yellowstone.

8pm

I’ve now got reports to write, which is the part of my job I dread. Writing up what’s happened during the assessment can be monotonous. And sometimes I might be writing up yesterday’s assessments and it’s hard to recall everything. I write a lot of notes during assessments and listen back to my recordings which is time-consuming.

If there’s one thing I’d change about my job it would be the bureaucracy of report writing. People can listen to recordings of assessments so they know what’s happened. Writing about why we think an apprentice has met the criteria is almost like doubling the work. They’re meant to be justifications [for the grade], but it’s very difficult to not fall into just saying, ‘the apprentice did this’.

One end-point assessment organisation I work for has a much more succinct way of doing it – criteria is assessed with a tick box. If there’s more to say you write it down, but they don’t expect you to write up what you could hear on a recording.

I then pull myself away from my laptop to get a proper break. Nowadays when I quality assure new assessors, when I see them taking on loads of work and their reports being uploaded at 4am, I’ll just give them a little call and remind them to take care of their wellbeing. There’s a fine line between being overworked and just working hard.

I’ve learned the hard way where that lies.

If you or someone in your organisation would like to tell us what a typical day involves in your job, please get in touch at jessica.hill@feweek.co.uk

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One comment

  1. A very interesting perspective here. The empathy for the apprentice is crucial. As with any industry, there are some incredible representatives, and a small number who are not.
    I wish every apprentice could meet such a caring assessor, who still maintains the high standards we expect from the EPA. Thank you for sharing