Welcome to our overview of the quality assurance model for 21 22.
This session will look at an outline of what we expect
the annual quality assurance model for your BTEC Entry to Level 3 programmes will look like
from September of 2021 through to the end of the academic year in July 2022.
However, because there is a consultation underway currently with Ofqual and the DfE there could be
some impacts on this process and so please do revisit our information
for further updates when they are available.
So the BTEC Quality Assurance cycle is a four-stage process and the cycle has been
designed to allow Pearson to work in partnership with you with a collective responsibility in
ensuring that every learner receives the right result for their BTEC qualifications.
We are also working to tailor our approach to provide you with a more individualised
and targeted approach giving you more advice and activity specific to your needs.
We also want to make sure that everyone involved at each stage of the process
is able to understand their role and able to make sure that the appropriate
quality assurance systems and procedures are in place in all of our centres.
The following slides will break this down and explain
each stage as you can see on screen with the current expected timeline.
So our Annual Centre Declaration form we do expect that you will complete this form by the 30th of
September in each year and you will find links for the form in all of the normal places that is on
Edexcel Online, on our Quality Nominee Support Hub, and in our Quality Nominee newsletter.
Essentially the document will confirm compliance with all of the quality assurance requirements for
your BTEC programmes. It will give you chance to let us know of any changes to your BTEC delivery
and it's also the vehicle that we will use
for you to confirm and sign up to the Terms and Conditions for delivering the BTEC programmes.
Signatures that you will be able to provide on this document
will be acceptable in electronic format and that will normally be your centre
email address and that of your Head of Centre as well.
Please do remember that completion of the document
is mandatory and non-compliance will be followed up by our Centre Management team.
Your Lead Internal Verifier is also part of this model, we do need them to register
at the start of each year and to download the course standardisation materials.
They will then carry out standardisation activity with their team or at the very least with the
person who is going to be the Internal Verifier for them on their programme and then that will be
confirmed using the buttons on Edexcel Online and we do have specific videos for that,
as well as events that explain how to do this. So please do join us for those.
Again the deadline for completion for these activities is going to
be the 30th of September in each academic year.
You will also see here links to our Centre Guides they're the current Centre Guides,
the 2021 guides. Obviously new guides are being prepared for you
for the next academic year, but you can safely use the current guides as a relevant starting point.
The next stage to consider is the Lead Standards Verifier activity.
Each centre will receive support from a Lead Standards Verifier and that will be up until at
least December, at which point you will be handed over to your subject specific Standards Verifiers
and, as ever, your Pearson Quality Advisor support will be ongoing right the way through the year for
all of our centres. As you can see there are two types of activity that will take place, there will
be a desktop review and there will be a virtual remote activity which will be a fuller review.
New and flagged centres will receive the remote activity undertaken in a full activity
using their Lead Standards Verifier, or in some cases their Pearson Quality Advisor.
Existing centres that have not been flagged for support will simply receive a desktop review
with their Lead Standards Verifier and all of this will take place by December 2021.
This activity of a full support activity will apply to any new centres, as well
as those who have been identified as requiring additional support.
It could be that you need support because you are newly merged as a centre,
or newly de-merged because that can equally throw up issues that we can support with.
It could be the issues have been found during this year's activities
and things like late registration is just one example of that.
So a Senior Lead Standards Verifier or one of your Pearson Quality Advisors will work with
you to review the internal assessment processes and selected policies and they will also ask to
set up virtual meetings with yourself and your Lead Internal Verifiers and the idea here is to
identify any actions that we can support with to help you improve your quality assurance systems.
So we're looking to signpost any additional support that would be useful for you.
The final part of the activity will be to discuss with you the evidence around your programmes in
terms of their Programme Ratings and that will inform Standards Verification moving forward.
Please do remember that the purpose of this activity is entirely supportive
and it's not any form of inspection or anything trying to trip you up.
For our existing centres there will be still that idea of support there for you through your Lead
Standards Verifier and where possible we will use the Lead Standards Verifier you had allocated to
you previously and because that person and Pearson know your quality assurance standards from that
previous work your Lead Standards Verifier will review your Annual Declaration, as well as taking
a check with you through your registrations to make sure that they are accurate and up-to-date.
Again the aim here is to make sure you have the support you need
to meet the demands going forward into the new term.
For our centres having the full remote activity you will have a report that you will see on
Edexcel Online and where that says 'submitted' it means that your Lead Standards Verifier or your
Pearson Quality Advisor has made the judgment that your centre is meeting the expectations
in respect of the quality objectives and measures, and this will mean that certification is released
pending Standards Verification for the academic year and no further action is required.
Where your outcome is 'pending centre actions required' this means that your Lead Standards
Verifier or PQA has judged that you do have a number of actions that do need to take place in
order to ensure full compliance, and certification here is temporarily suspended for around a month
or so while you work on an action plan with your Lead Standards Verifier or Quality Advisor
to just put things right and meet those set actions. At that point things will move to
'submitted actions reviewed' and that means that the actions are met and certification
is now available to you, again subject to Standards Verification later in the year.
An outcome on your report of 'Centre Quality Manager support required' means that insufficient
evidence for one or more of the key criteria has been seen and certification there is suspended
pending a referral to your Centre Quality Manager, that does put a block in place for
the whole centre and it means that again you will have contact with Pearson in the form
of your Centre Quality Manager, again working with you to support you to set up an action plan
that then we will help you to meet before you get to the point of certification.
Please do be aware that if you are only having the desktop review
as an existing centre you will not have a report made available to you.
The final part of our cycle is the subject-specific Standards Verification
and again a risk-based approach will be taken this year which means that all the available data
and discussions with you at the centre for each of the programmes you offer will be
separately assessed to make sure that the volume of sampling that takes place
means that the validity and reliability of claims will be protected for your learners.
So essentially we hope to recognise good practice and good track records, or alternatively where
a little bit of extra support might be required. Each of the programmes that you deliver will be
allocated a rating and the higher the rating the larger the sample that will be called for
in terms of Standards Verification, and there will be some criteria that we will look at
shortly to show you how we arrive at that rating, but it is worth pointing out that medium
is the normal, all right, so high ratings and low ratings are generally the exceptions;
medium is the normal. Now you will discuss these ratings with your
Lead Standards Verifier or your Pearson Quality Advisor and Edexcel Online will be updated with
the confirmed allocation status for each programme delivered. Now your LSV or PQA can recommend that
the rating is adjusted or reviewed but that is a recommendation and does require final sign off,
which will be looked at after a review of the comments and the evidence provided.
The criteria that will be used are examples as you can see here
similar to those used previously, but again they may be subject to change for the 21-22 cycle,
again as a result of the pending consultation and of course the impact of covid19.
The purpose here is to have a clear risk-based approach showing an understanding of your
centre and allowing Pearson to identify and celebrate good practice as well as allowing
us to support centres with delivering the standard. You can see that there are a number
of programmes listed on screen now and they are the ones which need to remain
as medium for the time being, just to make sure that enough historic data is collected
for them so that we can review their position in the medium sample range as we move forward.
Standards Verification will follow the normal process and again we will look at making sure that
you are clearly updated as we go along, so that we can check your operating standards and that
everybody is aware of what is expected. As normal you will receive notification of your Standards
Verifier details, which will then be hopefully passed along to your Lead internal Verifier
who will then work with your Standards Verifier to agree the sample and the deadline for that.
We will work to the same deadlines as normal, that is making sure your first samples are with
your Standards Verifier by the 15th of May and a second sample by the 15th of June, if required.
Remember that we do have myBTEC available for you to use which will support you and
take out some of the admin burden in terms of BTEC documentation and that samples can
be provided electronically using file share platforms, or using our free courier service.
We do have further videos and online sessions that will explain all of these processes to you
more fully and please do see our website for those.
Thank you for listening.
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