We are delighted to announce the release of our latest service, Capella Speech. This is our text to speech engine which has been designed to use the latest neural voice languages offered by Google, Microsoft and Amazon. There have been huge developments in the text to speech technologies in the last few years with a […]
When the old apprenticeship frameworks were switched off last July it prompted many providers to reconsider their delivery programmes and the methods they used for assessment. Framework delivery meant delivering NVQs or Diplomas that had very clearly defined criteria that needed to have evidence to demonstrate they had been met. Apprenticeship standards delivery is very […]
Curriculum Mapping – How important is it? Since the introduction of OfSTED’s Education Inspection Framework, the subject of curriculum planning has obviously been a hot topic. However, as part of this, there has also been deeper debate about curriculum mapping. A recently published article “Are curriculum maps a waste of valuable time” prompted some interesting […]
We have been working on an update to the organisational curriculum view so that all subjects or apprenticeship programmes can be seen in a single report. Users are now able to filter the view by year or level and then see the curriculum activities based on the length of the programme. Organisation Curriculum View In […]
OfSTED Inspection Return OfSTED announced this week that full inspections will not return until next summer but there will be a gradual resumption of monitoring visits. This means that due to Covid, full OfSTED inspections will not have been conducted for almost 15 months. Essentially, there has been either no or just light touch monitoring […]
We have just released a couple of new features in Stedfast which are designed to support whole school curriculum planning and to also manage MATs and subcontractors for colleges and training providers. Whole School Curriculum Planning One of the requests that we had from schools was to provide a way to see the entire curriculum […]
We were asked to do an online demo with a school last week as they were interested in developing their curriculum using Stedfast and we realised that we hadn’t really blogged much about developing a curriculum plan for GCSE subjects. What better time to do this as Storm Francis brings heavy rains, wind and is […]
Staff performance management is a process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organisation’s goals in an effective and efficient manner. Education and training providers need to ensure that employees understand expectations and to enable this, leaders need to make sure they are well managed, are motivated and have the skills, […]
It is fair to say that one of the most important developments that have taken place as a result of COVID-19 has been the switch to eLearning and online webinars. For many, this forced transition has come as a bit of shock but it has opened eyes to what is available to deliver online and […]
With the end of apprenticeship frameworks just a few days away we thought it would be timely to write a short article about apprenticeship on programme assessments. Apprenticeship frameworks were typically formed from portfolio-based qualifications. These followed the pattern of selecting the appropriate units, having learners submit evidence to cover the criteria, assessing the evidence […]