Off The Job Training
Off-the-job training is the part of your working week set aside for learning rather than doing your normal job. It is a legal requirement of every apprenticeship, it happens during your paid working hours, and your employer has to give you the time for it.
It is not extra work in the evenings, and it is not something you have to fit around your job. It is part of your job.
How many hours do I need?
The minimum is set for each apprenticeship standard, so it depends on which one you are doing. Your training plan states your figure — check it there, or ask your tutor.
You record the hours as you go, so that you and your tutor can see you are on track. That record is also what we and your employer rely on if anyone asks how your apprenticeship is being delivered.
What counts, and what doesn’t
The test is simple: does it teach you something new that your apprenticeship standard requires? If yes, it counts. If you are just doing your job, it does not — however much you learn along the way.
This counts
- Workshops and training sessions, online or on site
- Time with your tutor, including reviews
- Shadowing someone doing a task you are learning
- Being taught something new by a colleague or mentor
- Assignments, research and reading for your apprenticeship
- Practising a new skill under supervision
- Site visits, supplier visits and trade shows
- Writing up reflections and building your portfolio
- Webinars, e-learning and industry training
This doesn’t
- Doing your normal job, even on a busy or unusual day
- Repeating a task you already know how to do
- General team meetings and briefings
- Company induction and mandatory HR training
- Maths and English qualifications
- Anything outside your paid working hours
- Travel time
- Breaks
If you are unsure, log it and note why you think it counts. Your tutor would rather discuss a borderline entry than find out months later that you missed something.
Writing an entry that counts
Most entries fail for the same two reasons: they say what happened but not what changed, and they do not connect the activity to the knowledge, skills and behaviours your standard requires. An entry that just says “attended workshop, 3 hours” tells nobody anything.
Three things every entry needs.
1. What you did
The activity, and how long it took. One or two lines is plenty.
2. What you learned
What you can do now that you could not do before, or understand differently. This is the part people skip.
3. Which KSBs it covers
Name the specific knowledge, skills or behaviours from your standard. Your training plan lists them.
Not enough
“Workshop on quality control. 3 hours.”
Better
“Three-hour workshop on quality control. Learned how to use a densitometer to check colour consistency against the job spec, and why drift happens through a long run rather than just at start-up.
Back on shift I checked density at three points through a 5,000 run instead of only at the start. Caught a drift on the cyan unit at around 3,000 that I would have missed before, and flagged it before we produced waste.
Covers K6 (quality standards and measurement) and S4 (monitoring and adjusting the process).”
The second one is four sentences. It takes two minutes more to write and it is the difference between an entry that supports your portfolio and one that just fills a box.
Log it weekly
Pick a time each week and do the lot in one go — end of Friday shift works for most people. Ten minutes weekly is far less painful than trying to reconstruct a month from memory, and the entries are better because you still remember the detail.
- Log in to Smart Assessor
- Go to your off-the-job training log
- Add each activity from the week with the date and hours
- Write the entry using the three parts above
- Save, and check your running total against your target
Keep a note on your phone through the week as things happen — a couple of words is enough to jog your memory on Friday.
Not sure whether something counts?
Ask your tutor. Nobody expects you to get this right from a webpage, and a two-minute conversation now saves a problem later.