Wednesday 09 October 2013
A new name
We no longer have the role of Quality Advisor, this has been replaced by the new ‘Quality Verifier’ role. The Quality Verifiers are all current NCFE External Contractors (some of whom were previously Quality Advisors) so you’ll still get the great support and customer service you’ve always had. This role is more focused on quality assurance because we’ve now brought the quality assurance of IIQ centres in line with that of our NQF and QCF qualifications. This is because Ofqual is taking more of an interest in ‘non-regulated’ provision, so the Quality Verifiers are now managed by NCFE’s Quality Assurance team.
You won’t see a change in the support you receive. You can ask your Quality Verifier for advice on anything and they’ll be able to support you before, during and after visits. If there’s anything they can’t help with they’ll direct you the information or pass this on to someone at NCFE who can help.
When will I find out who my Quality Verifier is?
Over the next few weeks your new Quality Verifier will get in touch to introduce themselves, and discuss a date for your next visit. If you have any queries about the allocation of your Quality Verifier then please get in touch with Claire Bates (External Quality Assurance Officer) on [email protected] or 0191 239 8090.
When will I have my next visit?
Some of you may be currently waiting for a visit that was due over the last few months. Thanks for your patience with this - we had a break from visits while we finalised the new process and trained the team of Quality Verifiers so that we could start afresh with the new process from 1 October.
Changes to the visit types
We now no longer carry out re-approval visits. Once your centre has been approved as an NCFE IIQ centre you’ll be required to have 2 monitoring visits per year at 6 monthly intervals which don’t have to coincide with your approval anniversary date. This is to reduce any confusion for you in terms of what type of visit it is as every monitoring visit covers the same criteria, gives you the same level of support, uses the same report and has the same weighting.
What’s different on the visit?
Before the visit, the Quality Verifier will now send you a visit letter or email 3 weeks before the agreed visit date outlining what will be covered on the visit. They’ll highlight any particular points they’d like to focus on.
They’ll also look at your website (if you have one) at this point, and give you feedback on anything they feel doesn’t meet the ‘Stipulations for Advertising and Promoting Non-Regulated Courses’, so that you can take action on this before they visit.
They’ll now formally record on the report which programmes and learners they’ve sampled portfolios from, so in this letter they’ll let you know which they’d like to look at.
If your Quality Verifier has any concerns about the quality assurance processes at your centre they’ll discuss this with you and NCFE. Depending on the concerns we may decide to suspend the licence at any time, and this will no longer be linked to your ‘re-approval’ visit. We’ll obviously discuss this with you and keep you fully informed on any decision as well as supporting you with any actions.
What’s different on the report?
The report is much easier to read, and is clearer and easier to use. All your actions are in one place in an action plan so it’s clear to see what you need to do before your next visit.
As mentioned above, there’s now a section for the Quality Verifier to formally record details of the learner work they’ve looked at. This means there’s a record of additional feedback to you in terms of the assessment methods used for your programmes, and any specific feedback on the learner work seen by the Quality Verifier.
There is now no longer an overall grade as this caused confusion and it was also quite hard to determine consistently what grade a centre should be when they received actions at different grades.
The final page of the report is dedicated solely to examples of good practice shown by your centre. We feel this is a good way to finish off the report, as it gives you good feedback that can be passed on to your staff, and examples you can use in your own reporting.
We’ve also reduced the time (based on our Service Level Agreement) between the visit and you receiving the report from 10 working days to 5 working days. The Quality Verifier will send the visit report to you directly once they’ve completed it.
Changes to the way we invoice you
You no longer have a re-approval visit on your approval anniversary date, just 2 Monitoring visits per year. This is to remove the tie between the quality assurance of your IIQ provision and the issuing of your Licence or payment of the Licence fee. From now on we’ll invoice you on your approval anniversary date, and issue your IIQ Licence paperwork for the coming year. This is to stop the delay in issuing your Licence paperwork if you haven’t been able to have a visit at that time, for example, because of staff holidays, etc.
Although we’ve removed this tie to visits, you’ll still have 2 Monitoring visits per year, at approximately 6 monthly intervals, to maintain your approval.
If you were due a re-approval visit recently which you haven’t had, and therefore haven’t had your Licence paperwork sent through for this year, then don’t worry. We’ll invoice you over the next few weeks and get everything sent out to you.
What’s next?
Guidance and support – we’ll be producing a ‘User Guide’ to the new visit report which will map the report to the Quality Statements and give you advice about what sort of evidence you need to show the Quality Verifier on the visit.
We’ll also be updating the support documents on the website in line with the changes and will let you know about any new documents that are available to you.
Visit surveys - from now on we’ll be in touch periodically to ask you how your visit went, so it’ll be your chance to feedback on the support you receive from your Quality Verifier and NCFE as a whole, and how you feel the visit went.
If you have any questions about any of the above then please get in touch with Claire Bates in the External Quality Assurance team on [email protected] or 0191 2398090.