The Role of FIRST Face to Face in Enterprise Education

learners coming from DWP Job Centres, and actively seeking employment, or starting their own business[ES2] , the focus for FIRST is to provide their learners employability skills. FIRST do all they can to support their learners into employment, by teaching them these skills.

We wanted to know a bit more about how they deliver the course and why they chose to deliver Understanding Enterprise. Ellie told us that the course is delivered both online and face to face, providing a tailored approach for the learner. The Understanding Enterprise qualification, ensuring the learner meets the assessment criteria and learning outcomes, allows this flexibility.

The Understanding Enterprise qualification promotes self-reflection. The focus of the qualification is for the learner to discover their own strengths and weaknesses, and then come up with ways to develop. The Understanding Enterprise qualification is a great steppingstone for their learners from unemployment into employment, or running their start up business,

We were able to have a great catch up with FIRST Face to Face, one of many IOEE academies who deliver the SFEDI Understanding Enterprise and Passport to Enterprise and Employment qualifications. We spoke with Ellie, who is the learning and development manager at FIRST Face to Face.

We wanted to understand a bit more about how FIRST operates, their learners experience and what FIRST had planned for the future.

FIRST began their IOEE journey, delivering the Understanding Enterprise qualification. When delivering this qualification, they focused on enterprising skills [ES1] and employability skills, and allowed their learners the chance to explore their existing skills, as well as which skills they would need to learn. With alot of their

FIRST have recently delivered this qualification to a cohort of Ukrainian refugees. This cohort had a slightly different focus, and so they looked at how they may be able to set up a business in the UK and what the logistics of that are. They looked at soft skills as well as those all-important start up enterprising skills.

It is great to hear that a centre is thinking about how to support those fleeing Ukraine in a way that supports them with personal development and provides them with enterprising employability skills. FIRST managed to do this by creating materials, resources and workbooks with Ukrainian translations, so the learners were able to complete their assessments and meet the necessary criteria, whilst understanding what was being asked of them.

FIRST have recently started delivering the level one Passport to Enterprise and Employment qualification. So far, they have delivered this to one cohort and are working on improving their learners engagement. The Passport to Enterprise and Employment is another qualification that promotes reflection and personal development. FIRST are using the Passport qualification to give the learners a tailored, more personalised, experience. They are still focusing on employability, but also take their learners individual areas for development into account.

We discussed progression as a way to engage learners further. Do the learners want to study at a higher level? Do they want to continue to learn about a specific topic? And the answer to both of these questions is yes, which is brilliant! With the Passport To Enterprise and Employment continuing on to Level 2, it would be great to see some of FIRST’s learners return for a higher level of study.

We really enjoyed talking with FIRST Face to Face, and we cannot wait to see what the future holds for them. Keep up the great work and I am sure we will be checking in with you soon!

If you are interested in becoming an academy and delivering our Passport qualification, or our Understanding Enterprise qualification, then please get in touch with us at Contact UsInstitute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs (ioee. org.uk)

If you’d like to join the IOEE community with companies like these and become an accredited Academy, contact us today at: https://ioee.org.uk/ioee-academies