Employer Involvement in BTEC Level 3 Tech-Level Qualifications

Who is this information for? 

If you are delivering any of the following BTEC Level 3 qualifications in Art and Design or Creative Digital Media Production, you must meet the minimum requirement for meaningful employer involvement in order to allow for student certification. This must be recorded as an Employer Involvement Plan at the beginning of the course and will be requested by the Standards Verifier.

Does this mean work placements have to be found?

None of the units in any of the above BTEC programmes specify that a work placement is compulsory. Work placement is only one suggestion of how employers can be involved in the delivery of practical elements of these programmes. However, meaningful employer involvement is a mandatory requirement in our BTEC National Tech-Level qualifications and this may include:

• structured work experience or work placements that develop skills and knowledge relevant to the qualification/industry;

• project(s), exercise(s) and/or assessments/examination(s) set with input from industry practitioner(s);

• units delivered or co-delivered by an industry practitioner(s); this could take the form of masterclasses or guest lectures;

• industry practitioners operating as ‘expert witnesses’ who contribute* to the assessment of a learner’s work of practice, operating within a specified assessment framework; this may be a specific project(s), exercise(s) or all assessments for a qualification.

*contribute opinions but do not assess

Meaningful employer involvement, as defined above, must be with employers from the related sector ie. Art and Design or Digital Media sector and should contribute significantly to the number of units explicitly stated in Section 4: Planning your programme of the specification. In most units, we have provided suggestions on how employers could become involved in the delivery and/or assessment of the qualification. These are suggestions only and there will be other possibilities at local level. Centres may choose to use other approaches but must ensure that they meet the requirement for meaningful employer involvement as defined above.

Standards Verification of Employer Involvement

Centres must have an employer involvement plan in place at the start of the programme. It must detail their approach to employer involvement and how it will add value to the delivery and assessment of the qualification. Each centre’s approach to employer involvement will be monitored in two ways: at centre level as part of the annual quality-management review (QMR) process with the Quality Nominee and at programme level as part of the Standards Verification process, which addresses centre strategy for delivery, assessment and quality assurance. Your Standards Verifier (SV) will ask you to show evidence of how employer involvement is provided for all learners. You will need to show evidence in order to gain reporting clearance for certification.