Daniel Jennings recently achieved a distinction in his Level 5 Operations Management Apprenticeship despite me significant setbacks to his learning journey.

Dan, who is a CAD specialist and looks after a small team at Brown MacFarlane joined Performance Through People in 2023 when his previous training provider ceased trading. This not only brought about a change of tutor, but also a different awarding body and, compared with his previous provider, a completely new way of learning. Dan explained, “With my old training provider, all of the learning was online, I had to read tutorials and then answer questions about what I had read. I had some meetings with my tutor, but these were also pretty much exclusively online. When I moved to PTP, it was much more of a hands-on-experience. Dave Price, my tutor, came and saw me on site and provided me with real individualised support. It was tough at the beginning because much of the work that I had completed wasn’t really relevant to what I needed to produce for my End Point Assessment, however, Dave helped me gather practical evidence from my real work experiences that I cold use to fill the gaps in my portfolio.”

Dan Jennings (right) receives his certificate from his tutor Dave Price

Dave Price added, “Dan could have given up when hit with the challenges he’s outlined, however, he had such a positive attitude to the whole process it was a pleasure to work with him. When students have that genuine drive to succeed, I’ll always put in the extra hours to make sure that they have the support they need to achieve their goals. However, it wasn’t just Dan and me working on this, the whole team at Brown Mac were really supportive and if Dan needed the opportunity to work on a project or get access to something outside his normal responsibilities, then I knew that I could speak to his manager, Ant’ Ellis, or HR manager Linda Miller, and they would do everything in their power to help us out.”

Linda said, “We always saw the promise in Dan, which is why we invested in him. It’s great to see that he has done so well and I know the support he’s received from Dave has been a big part of this. I can’t wait for the Apprenticeship Graduation Ceremony when we can see him formally receive recognition for all of his hard work. We are now looking at another potential candidate to work with PTP as part of their management development.”

Linda Miller (HR Manager), Dan Jennings and his Line Manager Ant’ Ellis