You may have picked up that IOL are working in partnership with a group of employers to develop new apprenticeships for the outdoors.  This involves identifying sufficiently generic job roles in outdoor learning provision and what we would need a competent person to be able to do in that role, as well as deciding how to assess they are competent.  As the relatively recent call from Westminster to develop such ‘trailblazer apprenticeships’ coincides with the need for IOL’s professional accreditations to go through a review, the employer’s group and IOL have decided to ensure the two pieces of work inform each other.  The employer’s group has recently received the go ahead from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to start work on the first of the apprenticeship levels.