The new fully integrated end point assessment plans (EPAs) for the majority of the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) regulated occupations are now published and available for information. The standard documents remain unchanged. Many occupations are still awaiting funding band confirmation so are not yet ‘approved for delivery’.
The new EPAs are fully integrated and the EPA is now the exam board. This means that there is no longer any additional assessment burden on the apprentice for these occupations.
As the standards themselves remain the same, apprentices can be swapped to the new EPA (if the employer, training provider and apprentice are all in agreement). If the current EPA is credit-bearing, the provider will need to consider how that credit will be awarded within the programme instead of being allocated to EPA . The exam board in the fully integrated EPAs is not credit-bearing. If there is insufficient time to amend the programme prior to an apprentice reaching EPA, the apprentice will not be able to move to the fully integrated EPA model.
Higher Education Institution’s (HEIs) offering these apprenticeships must be registered both on the RoATP (Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers) and RoEPAO (Register of End Point Assessment Organisations).
You can read more about the rationale for the changes to the EPAs in our previous update.
In the meantime, you can download them from the bullet list on the standard pop up page.