What qualifications require Meaningful employer involvement?
One of the new requirements to vocational qualifications is the addition of Meaningful Employer Involvement (MEI).
Qualifications submitted to the DfE as Tech Levels or Technical Certificates require your students to complete meaningful activity involving employers during their study; and this must be quality assured by us.
What counts as MEI?
MEI can take place in a variety of different ways, such as:
- Employers can be involved in the delivery of the qualification content; for example as guest lecturers delivering unit content.
- Employers can be involved in setting projects, tasks or assessment assignments. We’ve worked with employers to create our Project Delivery Approaches – so you could use these.
- Employers can be involved in assessing assignments or providing expert witness statements that contribute to the assessment of your students work.
- Your students can take part in activities inside a workplace; for example structured work experience aligned to unit content.
What this means for your students:
Your students should be provided with the opportunity to really get to experience what their chosen career will be like. The involvement of practising professionals and real industry environments will allow your students to understand the knowledge and skills involved – not just in theory - but in practice too.
What this means for you:
You should select the best blend of activities to meet the unit learning outcomes, your student’s needs, and your local employer environment.
You can tailor MEI to enable your students to really engage with the world of work, and which can be practically delivered in your local area. There are no requirements to use certain types of MEI or combinations of activities if they are not practical in your local area.
What will you need to do?
Your Visiting Moderator will ask to see your Meaningful Employer Involvement Plan, which can be downloaded on each of the qualification pages. This plan covers:
- The qualification
- The unit
- What do you plan to do?
- When do you plan to do it?
- The date you completed it (if applicable)
- Any comments.
What this means for us:
MEI will be quality assured by your OCR Visiting Moderator.
Further information:
- Qualification centre handbook: Section 5 provides more detail on MEI, the minimum requirements and the centre plan.
- DfE Technical Guidance