Fitch Learning Skills Coach Forum

Dear all

Firstly, thank you for all your hard work to date - it is much appreciated. I appreciate we are all on a steep learning curve with the Apprenticeships programme and I'm grateful for your patience while we put in place the building blocks to support our apprentices and programmes.

A couple of announcements for all of you:

1. Sam (Mayes) has decided to step back from the Lead Skills Coach due to his other commitments ramping up recently - effective immediately. I want to take this opportunity to thank Sam for all he has done in creating a cohesive and collaborative approach to the skills coach role. Sam will continue his normal skill coach duties so happily we aren't losing him completely. We are fortunate in that James Craggs has agreed to move into the Lead Skills Coach role. I'll leave James to outline his "vision" on this but please be assured that the support continues and direct any questions to James going forward.

2. On a separate note (but related) I want to apologise to you all for an inconsistent approach recently in terms of communications from the team at Fitch. This has been due largely to a lack of resources and a massive increase in work. However, we will soon be joined by a new Head of Quality who will be working very closely with you, Glenise Burrell. Some of you may remember Glenise from the Ofsted training day at Mark Lane back in the Summer. I'm delighted that Glenise is joining the team from 18th October and we will schedule a face to face session for you all shortly. We are also increasing the admin support in the team which I hope will ease some of the load on Sara and Amelia - I'll introduce new members of the team as they join us. In the meantime, please bear with us while we juggle several balls!

Please let me (or now James!) know if you have any questions.

Kind regards,

Lydia