Listen to this story Members can listen to an AI-generated audio version of this article. 1.0x Audio narration uses an AI-generated voice. 0:00 0:00 Become a member to listen to this article Subscribe A healthcare apprenticeship provider has paused starts while it battles with poor achievement rates that led to Ofsted dishing out multiple ‘urgent improvement’ judgments. Hertfordshire-based Averee Ltd received the lowest possible rating for both leadership and governance and achievement in a report published today under the watchdog’s new report card system. The provider, which mostly trains adult care worker apprentices online, saw its overall apprenticeship achievement rate fall 12 percentage points from 36.2 per cent in 2023-24 to 24.2 per cent in 2024-25, compared to the national average of 65.4 per cent. Inspectors found leaders had a “superficial understanding” of the provider’s strengths and weaknesses, with poor oversight leading to ineffective tracking of apprentice progress. While leaders recognised the need to improve retention and completion, Ofsted said their actions had failed to deliver results. A spokesperson for Averee said the company had already taken a “proactive” decision to pause recruitment in July 2025 to focus on improving quality and outcomes for its existing learners. The report marks the second further education provider to receive the lowest grade since Ofsted scrapped overall effectiveness judgments in favour of a five-point scale across multiple areas, ranging from ‘exceptional’ to ‘urgent improvement’. The first was JS Consult, another healthcare apprenticeship provider with similarly weak achievement rates. At the time of inspection, Averee had 51 adult apprentices, most studying level 2 and 3 adult care programmes and level 5 leader in adult care. A small number were enrolled on higher-level care and management standards. Training is delivered largely online. Inspectors identified widespread weaknesses in delivery. Too few apprentices complete their programmes on time and too many fail altogether. Many learners are unclear about what they need to do to finish their apprenticeship and are poorly prepared for final assessments. Those who fall behind are not supported effectively to catch up, while leaders were criticised for setting low expectations that fail to motivate apprentices or ensure timely progress. English, maths and digital skills development was also found to be poor. Staff do not consistently correct written English errors, leading apprentices to repeat mistakes, while spoken English is not developed well enough to prepare learners for professional discussions at their final assessment. Although recent interventions such as additional mock tests have been introduced, inspectors said these are too new to show any impact. Ofsted acknowledged that leaders have a clear aim to make training accessible to the healthcare workforce and are now rethinking their strategy – including whether to continue offering apprenticeships in the sector at all. Despite this, safeguarding arrangements were deemed effective, and apprentices who remain on programme benefit from strong pastoral support. Learners reported feeling safe and said tutors help them manage their wellbeing and build resilience. Averee received three ‘needs attention’ ratings, including for inclusion, curriculum and teaching, and participation and development. The provider argued that external pressures in the healthcare sector, including service closures and workforce changes among a small pool of employer partners, have disproportionately affected achievement rates. The provider pointed to an in-year retention rate of 80 per cent as evidence of “strong” learner support and engagement. Under government accountability rules, an ‘urgent improvement’ judgment places apprenticeship providers in an “at risk” category, typically triggering intervention from the Department for Education and potentially leading to contract termination. Averee said it is working closely with officials to secure a “stable and high-quality path forward” while reviewing its long-term apprenticeship strategy. “Our priority remains ensuring that all learners are supported to successfully complete their programmes,” the spokesperson added. “We remain committed to acting with transparency and integrity throughout this process.”
annonymous 8 April 2026 This is now a trend relating to the sector and not to poor provision, the majority of ITPs who have received the lowest grading in inspection are ones who provide apprenticeships to the care sector. The issues are too often out of the control of the ITP and are born out of the way in which the care sector has to operate post covid and dare I say post brexit. What OFSTED consider the norm in apprenticeship delivery is not how it is in the Care Sector. There is little that can be done either and ITPs try to manage it the best they can, but constant churn of staff, covering for sickness and having to deal with life threatening issues for service users means that delivery is difficult to plan, even when delivered remotely. Those providers who seem to be achieving high retention and high achievement rates are dare I say, maybe just a bit too supportive with their learners as the majority of decent honest providers delivering care standards try to do the best by the learners but also face issues whereby the learners themselves are not academic and often struggle to retain the ‘buzz’ words that inspectors expect to hear (no matter how much you explain to a learner in the care sector they are doing a standard, they will refer to their apprenticeship as an NVQ). It is about time that OFSTED looked into their own statistics and realised this, instead of having this one size fits all approach to inspection, that said maybe the government should also take note and realise that the care sector isn’t just about low skilled workers as they call it and look to support it financially as it should be in order to retain staff and not have them leave to get paid more scanning food in Tescos. Issues such as learners going beyond planned end date is not something that should carry the weight it does in inspection either, as it is a ‘planned’ end date and plans often change, the majority of the planned time is also set against the value of the standard as you have to plan it efficiently for cash flow to ensure that tutors can be paid a fair wage on a reasonable cohort, again not taking into account by the DfE or OFSTED. Too much pressure is still being applied to providers in relation to how they should deal with these things, ultimately expecting the provider to tell an employer that they MUST do this and that, it takes years to build a solid relationship with employers and to be supportive in their training needs and their requirements to develop staff in a cost effective way to ensure staff have the correct qualifications to offer the vital care and support they do to their service users. So I feel truly sorry for this provider and those others who have fallen foul of an inspection framework that is not sector specific and does not take into account the issues of the care sector. They are obviously working with a number of foreign nationals too who will have English as a second language but are caring and compassionate and responsible enough to offer care to anyone and the provider is expected to ensure that they can speak fluently enough to pass an EPA discussion and if they don’t then they are at fault, yet translators are used to support foreign nationals for every aspect of well fare support if required, nothing makes sense anymore. It is almost impossible now to deliver good quality provision in the care sector (unless you are prepared to do the work for the learners) and if there is such an issue with retention then maybe look at why people leave their jobs rather than penalising a provider because they took the learner on in good faith, maybe look at recovering costs from the individual and letting the provider continue to deliver to other learners. The Big Listen obviously was just about listening as it appears they have not acted or at least looked at the data in front of them and asked the question WHY?????