As many do, Jessica struggled at the start of her apprenticeship. She was shy but motivated to achieve her qualification. Jessica struggled because of her short attention span; this led to her leaving sessions early or arriving at them late. She also became very overwhelmed by the amount of coursework she needed to complete, especially for the management qualification. Because she was so overwhelmed by these factors, she began to give up just before she had started!

Nel van Zanten; Jessica’s tutor, gave her extra support every month to discuss progress, to support with study skills, to discuss problems in the setting, to discuss the next steps in her career, to do professional discussions to provide evidence for specific units which she found difficult. After plenty of encouragement and support, Jessica decided to stay on course and started to believe in herself more and more. She very quickly developed her essay writing skills, and after her first observation, several units were awarded! Jessica’s achievement inspired other learners in the group, and she and the other learners started sharing best practices, creative ideas, and advice.

As she was working as bank staff and was seeing a variety of settings and gaining knowledge through her course, she gained confidence and direction and started to think of starting up her setting. With her partner, she started looking for premises, and after she found suitable premises near a station, she wrote a business case as part of her course and used this for getting finance for her venture. While renovating and applying for Ofsted approval, Jessica was able to develop her new practice while studying the unit’s recruitment, induction, quality, and write policies and procedures for her unique setting.

Jessica achieved her CYP L5, BTEC, and Management L5 at the same time as her Ofsted approval came through. She is now awaiting her EPA assessment and goes through the gateway. Jessica has become more confident and knowledgeable. She stated that she ‘could not have achieved this without all the support and encouragement.’