Personal and academic support

You will meet once per semester, on an individual basis, with your named Personal Tutor. The Personal Tutor is an academic member of staff based in the Management School who understands your academic needs and can offer pastoral advice. The purpose of these meetings is to work with you to reach your full potential during your time on the programme. The sessions will provide general guidance on academic matters, including your progress throughout the programme, providing timely and useful guidance appropriate to your individual progression.

Where necessary, your Personal Tutor will be able to direct you to more specialist support, either personal, academic or more general. You will also have access to high-quality professional service advice throughout your studies.

To get the best from this partnership, you will need to;

• To get the best from this partnership, you will need to;

• attend scheduled meetings punctually;

• keep your tutor informed of any problems that affect your university work;

• talk to them about your academic progress - they will be able to offer an informed overview and if necessary, suggest places to find more help;

• become an ‘active learner’ - reflect on the feedback you get from assignments and discuss this with your tutor to help improve your performance;

• discuss future planning and personal development;

• get to know your tutor, and let them get to know you - they will be writing your references in future and need to do this accurately.

You will agree on a written summary of the discussion, including any actions to be taken in advance of the next meeting with your tutor. It is intended that this is a confidential record unless there is an agreed sharing of information for referrals and handovers. Please note, for issues that relate specifically to a particular module, you should seek advice from the module leader.

Further information is available here:
sheffield.ac.uk/lets/pp/support/tutors

Academic and practice review meetings

In addition, all learners studying on an apprenticeship programme have to meet three times per academic year with their Line Manager (or equivalent) from their workplace and their Academic and Practice Mentor from the Management School. The Academic and Practice Review Meetings have been designed to be a holistic and iterative process, bringing together the knowledge, skills and behaviour elements of your apprenticeship programme in order for all parties to work together to help you succeed.

During the meetings, you can expect to discuss the following items:

• Expectations around the work based portfolio and academic programme, including the format of your individual learning plan (first meeting of the academic year).

• Progress towards the knowledge, skills and behaviours of the apprenticeship standard.

• Personal, career and progression objectives.

• Any support or training required to support your development and achievement of goals, including noting progress towards the twenty percent of off-the-job training.

• Your preparation for the end point assessment.

• Agreement of SMART targets at the end of each meeting, which are to be reviewed at the following meeting.

Meetings will take place at a mutually agreed venue such as at the workplace, at the Sheffield University Management School or virtually. Items discussed at all meetings, and any resulting actions, will be recorded on the learner’s individual learning plan (ILP) and stored in the learner file in PebblePad which can be accessed at any time by all three parties.

Following the completion of the academic award, the learner and Academic and Practice Mentor will meet an additional two times in the six-month period. These meetings will be dedicated to preparing you for the End Point Assessment (EPA).