Placement Audit Guide for Coordinators

This guide is for placement managers and coordinators. It explains how to export your placement data, organise it by coordinator, and spot the anomalies that need attention.

Export your data

1. Go to the Reports module.
2. Open the Student Engagement & WEXP Report.
3. Choose Export data > Data with current layout and click Export.
4. Open the spreadsheet from your downloads. We will call this the master sheet.

Prepare the master sheet

1. Enable editing.
2. Click the triangle at the top right-hand corner to select the whole page.
3. Go to Format > Autofit Column Width.
4. Slide column B over to make column A smaller.
5. Select Row 1, then Sort & Filter > Filter. This adds a filter to all your columns.

Split the data by coordinator

1. On the Coordinator column (Column G), click the filter button, unselect all, and select one coordinator.
2. Create a new tab for that coordinator, then copy and paste all the filtered data into that tab.
3. Delete their data from the master sheet.
4. Click the Coordinator filter again and select the next coordinator. Repeat the process until each coordinator has their own tab.

Spreadsheet filtering — love them or hate them, they are very useful.

Highlighting anomalies

Now you can highlight cells that may look like they need attention by the coordinator. Review each of the following:

• Employer — Does the employer name need amending, e.g. spelt wrong, needing caps?
• Employer compliant — Highlight any 'No's.
• Employer Contact & Email — Ensure these are populated for safeguarding.
• Non-working time — T Levels must have a 30-minute minimum added if a shift is over 4.5 hours. This is automatically deducted from the employer-confirmed hours.
• Planned Hours — What are you asking the employer and student to fulfil on this placement?
• Scheduled hours — Is there enough for the student to achieve their target? 8 hours per day maximum.
• Scheduled hours to date — How many hours the student should have completed by now.
• Student logged — How many hours the student has confirmed.
• Confirmed hours — Employer-confirmed hours from weekly attendance emails against the hours scheduled.
• Placement type — Ensure these are all correct and none left 'Not assigned'.
• Status — Cross-reference any that are awaiting approval with their start date. It may be taking longer to approve and the start date may need amending.
• Student feedback received — If the placement is complete, ensure the student has completed feedback.
• Employer feedback received — If the placement is complete, ensure the employer has completed feedback; this can be resent to them. If the employer has sent feedback while the placement is still live, this may mean the last scheduled day has passed and the employer received the automated request. To keep the placement live, you can add a far-reaching end date (perhaps the last day of the academic year) to stop this feedback sending until you remove the holding date.

Understanding what to look for

The Scheduled hours to date, Student logged and Confirmed hours columns should all be similar in number. Once you know what to look for, you will be able to spot anomalies with ease.

• Student logged hours exceed scheduled hours — the student is adding more hours than scheduled. Do they need their scheduled hours amending? Are they doing too many hours per day? Are they trying to add more time than they are actually doing?
• No employer-confirmed hours — this may be for many reasons. The employer emails may be turned off, the email you hold may be incorrect, the contact may no longer be the student's manager or may have left the company, they may need a reminder how to confirm attendance, or a strong firewall may be blocking Navigate Learning emails.
• Status: marked complete but employer has not confirmed hours — your MIS uses the employer-confirmed hours to claim for qualifications. Either reset the status to live and resend the attendance email, or if you no longer have contact with the employer, switch the emails on to yourself as coordinator and confirm on their behalf. Be sure the student did attend; journal entries will help you evidence this.
• Status: marked complete but student has not confirmed hours and has only written 6 journal entries — even though your MIS uses employer-confirmed hours to claim, students need to reflect on their placement journey to make it meaningful. Reset the status to live and contact the student to confirm these dates. Best practice is not to complete the placement until all actions are done.
• Student & employer feedback both missing — the placement is complete but neither feedback has been done. The student can be encouraged to complete theirs, and the employer feedback can be resent from the Employer tab of the placement > Resend Feedback request email.
• Employer feedback completed while placement still live — feedback only sends once the last scheduled day has elapsed. If the student is continuing but unsure of their scheduled dates, keep the placement live by adding a far-reaching end date (e.g. the last day of the academic year) that stops the employer feedback going out until you remove it.
• Student logged hours are zero — the student needs encouragement to confirm their attendance. Do they know how to log in and confirm? Do they have access to a computer to do this in college time?
• Confirmed hours are low — the contact whose email you hold may no longer be the student's manager, may have left the company, or may need a reminder how to confirm attendance.

Student hours higher than scheduled hours

If the student's hours are higher than scheduled hours, the student is adding more hours when confirming attendance. Navigate automatically adds the scheduled hours, but the student is increasing this. Were their shifts actually longer than scheduled? As the employer-confirmed hours are what the college uses for claiming, this is not an issue in itself, but it may mean the student was potentially working too much. The scheduled hours may need adjusting to accommodate a longer working day.

Note: employees aged 16 to 17 must not work more than 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week. They also have more generous break and rest period entitlements than older members of staff, and restrictions are placed on shift times, meaning under-18s should not perform night work.

Scheduled hours but zero logged and zero confirmed

• If there are scheduled hours to date, no confirmed hours by student or employer, and the placement is live: check the student knows they should be attending, knows how to confirm attendance, that employer emails are turned on, and that the start date is correct.
• If there are scheduled hours to date and the placement is still Placement request awaiting approval: the student's anticipated start date has elapsed before you approved it. Remind them not to attend until the placement is approved, and remove any dates scheduled before the placement became approved.

Source document attached below.