Unveiling Paragon Skills’ Learner Experience Survey Results: Key insights into learner satisfaction and success

At Paragon Skills, we’re committed to delivering the best possible learning experience for all our apprentices. To ensure we continue to meet and, where possible, exceed expectations, we conduct an annual Learner Experience survey. This survey is crucial in helping us understand how well we’re doing and where we can improve.

In this blog, we’ll share the key insights into learner satisfaction, their outcomes, and highlight the areas where we can continue to grow and enhance the overall experience for our apprentices. Exploring a range of key areas, the survey provides us with valuable feedback, direct from our learners. From how satisfied they are with their Personal Tutor, to what impact apprenticeships are having on their careers, the survey also measures key customer experience metrics, like Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction, which we’ll tell you more about next.

Learner Satisfaction: A Snapshot of Key Metrics

Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) are two key customer experience metrics that help us understand how our learners feel about their apprenticeship journey with us. While both provide valuable insights, they measure different aspects of the learner experience. CSAT focuses on immediate satisfaction, reflecting how happy learners are with specific transactional experiences, like interactions with their Personal Tutor, or their enrolment experience. In contrast, NPS takes a broader view, assessing the relationship we have with our learners, and their likelihood to recommend us to others. While CSAT measures satisfaction in the moment, NPS captures the long-term, relational experience.

We’re excited to share that in 2024, 92% of our learners are satisfied with us. That’s a 4.15% increase in our CSAT score compared to 2023. We’re also proud to report that our NPS score is now 48. That’s a 9.2 point increase from 2023. To put this into perspective, the UK median NPS score is 44. These insights tell us that almost all of our learners are happy and would recommend us to friends, family and colleagues.

Learner Satisfaction: Personal Tutors

An impressive 87% of learners reported that they were satisfied with their Personal Tutor this year, that’s up by 1.6% compared to 2023. This year, learners cited their Personal Tutor’s knowledge, expertise and quality teaching were the biggest drivers of their satisfaction. Learners also appreciate the level of ongoing, tailored support they get from their Personal Tutor, which helps them stay on track and overcome any challenges.

“My tutor is very knowledgeable and encourages me to be the best practitioner I can be.”​

​“When I first started the course I was anxious that I would pass it, but my tutor really supported me and helped me through the course.”​

While feedback about our Personal Tutors and the support our learners receive was overwhelmingly positive, a small minority of learners suggested that clearer guidance and more frequent feedback from their Personal Tutor could further enhance their apprenticeship experience (2% and 3% respectively). In response to this, we’re actively working on improving these areas to better support our learners, including a dedication to monthly learner progression, with regular touchpoints and opportunities for learners to feedback, ask questions or request support.

Impact: Productivity, Confidence, and Relevance

A significant number of learners reported enhanced productivity and confidence in their roles. Specifically, 82% of learners believe their apprenticeship has made them more productive, while 87% feel it has increased their confidence. Many learners also highlight that the skills they acquired during their apprenticeship have had a direct positive impact on their job performance. Additionally, 91% of learners agree that their apprenticeship is relevant to their role, with the skills gained directly applicable to their work. These findings demonstrate that our programmes are successfully bridging the gap between learning and real-world application.

Reasons for Enrolling: Success Rates

Many learners indicated that the biggest reason for enrolling onto an apprenticeship was to advance their careers; with skills development being a close second. Our 2024 Learner Experience Survey results show that 63% of learners chose to enrol onto an apprenticeship themselves, while 22% of learners were put forward for their apprenticeship by their manager, and 15% of learners indicated that enrolling on their apprenticeship was a mandatory requirement for their job role. This reflects our commitment to providing learners with valuable, career-enhancing apprenticeships; and the confidence of our employer partners to include our apprenticeships in their training and development plans, as well as their paths to career progression.

The data from this survey reveals that learners who chose to enrol onto their apprenticeship themselves tend to have higher achievement rates than those nominated by their manager. In fact, 82% of learners who chose to do an apprenticeship themselves and completed our Learner Experience survey in 2023 went on to successfully complete their apprenticeship in 2024. This is compared to 77% of learners who were nominated by their manager, and 63% for whom the apprenticeship was a mandatory requirement for their job role. These figures indicate that learners who choose to enrol onto an apprenticeship themselves are more motivated and committed to succeeding and completing it.

Learner Satisfaction: Learning Resources

Overall, our learners were satisfied with learning resources provided, to help them succeed on their apprenticeship. We always want to ensure our learning resources are as effective as possible. To do this, we ask our learners how informative, engaging, relevant, clear, and easy to understand their learning resources are. We’re delighted to report that satisfaction has increased against four out of these five criteria compared to 2023, with one criteria remining constantpecifically:​

​Informative: Agreement increased from 86% to 88%.​

Engaging: Agreement remained constant at 77%.​

Relevant: Agreement increased from 84% to 86%.​

Easy to Understand: Agreement increased from 78% to 83%.​

Clear: Agreement increased from 82% to 84%.​

We hear that 23% of learners who don’t feel our learning resources are as engaging as they could be, and we’re dedicated to fixing that. We’re passionate about enhancing our learners experience, and to address this, we’re continuously improving and expanding our portfolio of Elevate apprenticeships. This is our unique way of delivering apprenticeships and it means more hands-on sessions, group workshops, peer-learning, tailored personal development and interactive eLearning. Our Elevate delivery method is specially designed to offer the best learner experience possible.

What’s Next: Paragon Skills’ Commitment to Continuous Improvement

The valuable insights gained from this annual survey provide us with a clear direction of travel, as we strive to continually improve our apprenticeship offering, service and, ultimately, learner experience. In addition to the improvements already mentioned, we’re also busy working on ways to make it easier for our learners to give us feedback, and ways we can better support our learners when they need it most. We’re committed to the success of every one of our learners.

We’re grateful for the feedback shared by our learners, and it’s clear that we’re on the right track—but there’s always room for improvement. If you’re interested in learning more about how Paragon Skills can support your career goals, visit our website and start your apprenticeship journey today.