To provide the best possible education opportunities, it’s important to be ready to tailor provision to learners’ needs. That’s something that Matt Clark has learned through his career in the education sector. From working in further education to supporting our customers to succeed with our assessment and learning software, he has gained key insights into how important the right investment in software solutions can be. We spoke to him to learn more about how our team and our software provide the right solutions to the customers who need it most.
What’s your experience in the education sector?
I trained as a teacher at university before entering the world of work in a role at a further education college. Today, I’m part of OneAdvanced in the Education Team, working on our learning and assessment platform. I work directly with customers, providing guidance on how our solutions can make a difference for their learners in a range of environments, be that end-to-end apprenticeships, further education or even beyond traditional education settings.
Could you tell us more about the learning providers we support?
Yes, we’ve got a very wide customer base on the assessment and learning solution. This includes schools, further education colleges, training providers delivering apprenticeships. We also help other sectors, such as the prison service, who use it to help those who have experienced the prison service and are re-entering their communities, and employers in the healthcare sector, who use it to support their employees’ skills and competences. It’s used to find that starting level of their learners in terms of Maths, English and digital skills and provide them with the most appropriate content to allow them to improve their skills and generally improve their outlook in future.
What are the key challenges facing the education sector?
The main challenge for the education sector, when it comes to assessment and learning, is finding that starting point of their learners. A lot of the time, we work with organisations where they’re dealing with students that haven’t got prior qualifications or haven’t studied for a long time. Our assessment and learning tool will give them that understanding of where that learner’s ability is when they start their course or when they onboard with the organisation. That’s how it adds so much value for our customers and learners.
Could you tell us more about how we support our customers and their learners to provide education?
One of the key sectors that we work with, using the assessment and learning solution, is the prison service. Our tool is used extensively across the prisons within the United Kingdom. So, we work very closely with the providers that deal with learners within the prison system. Fundamentally, it’s about bridging that digital divide. They use our Maths, English, and digital skills solutions. And again, it all comes down to finding those starting levels and starting abilities of those learners, then providing them with the most appropriate materials to allow them to develop their skills. It’s so that, when they are ready to re-enter their communities, they’ve got those skills to help them succeed. Whether it comes to applying them to their everyday life or whether it comes to getting back into the workplace, they’ve got the necessary skills at their disposal to thrive in that situation.
How is this solution used beyond the education sector?
A key example is our work with the NHS. We work with a range of healthcare providers to support them in their internal learning and development practice, providing them with a really useful tool for skills training for their employees. That’s training that’s provided to a range of non-clinical staff who want to improve their skills in key areas.
The Learning and Assessment tool is used extensively across NHS trusts and local GP surgeries, where their employees are working to improve their maths, English and digital skills. They can spend a bit of time on the portal, whenever they have some downtime, and work with the resources for those subjects, which allows them to enhance their understanding and improve their skills for the future.
This is useful for a range of purposes. Some of those staff members are looking to work on apprenticeships towards clinical roles in health and care, while others are just hoping to improve their skills. The resources are designed so they can be used within a busy schedule, often video resources that are only two or three minutes long. It means that, whether they’re working towards an exam or just upskilling themselves, they have quality resources that are tailored to their needs.
We’d like to thank Matt for sharing his insights, and all the work he does to support vital education providers. If you want to learn more about how we work with customers to create solutions from expertise, check out our recent blog on our work with the legal sector, in conversation with Astrid Bowser.