Leadership development for senior managers is often
problematic in terms of resource, but a new higher apprenticeship offers an
innovative approach to resolving this.
Apprenticeship funding for postgraduate education in
leadership and management has allowed key organisations across all sectors of
the economy to develop their managerial capabilities. Indeed apprenticeships
have offered truly transformational opportunities to those mid-career learners
who might otherwise have lacked the time and the financial resources to pursue
a part-time Master of Business Administration (MBA) qualification. However, the
challenges presented by managing formal academic assessments, and building an
apprenticeship portfolio, while fulfilling a senior management role have meant
that to date, leadership apprenticeships have been frankly just too difficult
for many.
Following a change to the senior leadership apprenticeship
standard, Newcastle Business School has developed a new and genuinely
distinctive Senior Leader Higher Apprenticeship (SLHA). This apprenticeship
offers a number of truly useful and distinctive innovations. It dispenses with
the traditional forms of academic assessment, offers a pathway to the Newcastle
Business School MBA and yet still utilises the support of Skills
Funding Agency Levy funding. Furthermore, the Newcastle Business School
provides widening participation opportunities. It offers an entry point to
postgraduate education for those without previous higher education experience,
and so enables those without a degree qualification to study at a level
commensurate with their leadership experience.
Dr. Helen Charlton, Director of Education for Leadership and
HRM Apprenticeships within Newcastle Business School explained why the
University had chosen this new approach: ‘We were aware that the apprentices on
our existing postgraduate programmes truly value the opportunity to secure the
MBA, which is, of course, the internationally recognised qualification in
business and management. And yet we recognised that our apprentices, despite
having 20% of their working time set aside for off-the-job training, really
struggled to complete their academic assessments, while developing the
portfolio of learning that is required for the apprenticeship qualification. We
decided therefore that we would use the change to the funding regime as an
opportunity to engineer a positive transformation in learner experience. We
dispensed with academic assessments and developed a workshop-based programme which
maps to the new apprenticeship and to the benchmark statements associated with
the MBA qualification. This workshop-based approach allows us to widen
participation while maintaining a route to the MBA qualification. We feel it is
a genuinely radical and productive innovation’.
The programme which launched in September 2021 currently has
35 participants drawn from the public, private and the ‘third sector’ of the
economy. The model operates on a periodic block-delivery model, meaning participants
meet two days a month on campus from 09:30 – 16:30, with allowances for childcare
commitments during school holidays. This format has proven so successful, and
so popular with students and their employers, that it has been used to develop
a Senior People Professional Higher Apprenticeship, leading to Chartered CIPD
status, which will be launched in early 2023.
To find out more about Senior Leader Higher Apprenticeship
visit our course page here and to learn more about apprenticeships offered by Newcastle Business School click
here and watch the video below.
