The end-point assessment, explained

Every apprenticeship ends with an independent end-point assessment (EPA) — the final check that you can actually do the job the standard describes. For DTS it's built around a real workplace project, it's integrated with the degree, and it decides your final grade. This page is the official EPA plan for ST0119 v1.2, translated.

EPA period

typically 3 months

Method 1

Project report + presentation with Q&A

Method 2

Professional discussion + portfolio

Grades

Fail · Pass · Merit · Distinction

Assessed by

An independent assessor at your university

Who runs it

DTS is an integrated degree apprenticeship, so the university delivering your degree also runs the EPA — it must be on both the register of apprenticeship training providers and the register of end-point assessment organisations. The assessor is still independent of your teaching, and the EPA typically contributes around 30 credits of the degree. The result is aggregated into the final degree award: no EPA, no degree.

The gateway

You can't start the EPA until you pass through "gateway" — the formal decision that you're ready. Your employer makes that call (advised by the university). At gateway you must:

• have passed every required element of the degree apart from the EPA itself;
• hold English and maths qualifications in line with the funding rules;
• submit a project title and summary (~500 words) for sign-off within two weeks — scope, plan, timescales;
• submit your portfolio of evidence — typically 6 discrete pieces collected across the whole programme, each mapped to the knowledge, skills and behaviours it demonstrates, with a signed statement from you and your employer that it's genuinely your work.

Method 1: project report, presentation and questioning

A significant piece of real work with genuine business value — a specific problem, a recurring issue, or an opportunity. The project itself can happen before gateway; the report is written after it:

• 6,000-word report (±10%; appendices and diagrams don't count), submitted by the end of week 12 of the EPA period — introduction, scope with KPIs and stakeholders, plan, research, outcomes, recommendations, and an appendix mapping it all to the assessed KSBs;
• 60-minute presentation with questions, one-to-one with the independent assessor (video call allowed) — typically 30 minutes presenting the project and 30 minutes of questioning, minimum four questions.

You can have worked in a team on the project — but the report must be your own work about your own contribution, and both you and your employer confirm that in writing.

Method 2: professional discussion, underpinned by the portfolio

A structured, 60-minute two-way conversation with the independent assessor (minimum four questions, again extendable by 10%). Your portfolio sits on the table: you answer with reference to your evidence. The portfolio itself is not marked — it exists to underpin what you say. The discussion tests the KSBs that the project can't reach.

Grading

Each method is graded fail, pass or distinction; they combine into the overall apprenticeship grade:

If it goes wrong

Failing a method isn't the end: with your employer's agreement you can re-sit (no further training needed, typically within 3 months) or re-take (with retraining, typically within 6). A failed project means reworking the report against the assessor's feedback, with 4 weeks to resubmit. Everything must be re-sat within 6 months of the result, or the whole EPA is retaken. (Failing an individual degree module mid-programme is a separate, more common situation with normal university resit processes — it delays gateway rather than triggering any of this.)

Summarised from the official ST0119 v1.2 end-point assessment plan — contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Your university's EPA handbook is the binding version of this; read it in your final year, not your final month.