Quality assurance for Qualifications Accreditation
A qualification gets a much closer look, and keeping the approval depends on a quality system that goes on producing evidence year after year. This is part of our Qualifications Accreditation service, and the rest of this page goes into the detail. Running short courses for a CPD body instead? See quality assurance for CPD Certification.
Initial, before submission and first learners
- A mock review against the MFHEA standards or the awarding organisation's criteria.
- Level mapping and assessment checked by someone who did not build them.
- Internal quality assurance policy, sampling plan and standardisation arrangements written and in place.
- Staff records and tutor guides complete.
- A readiness report with the gaps and who closes them.
Maintenance, through the approval period
- Internal verification sampling, recorded as it happens.
- Standardisation meetings run and minuted.
- Self-evaluation kept up through the year.
- Preparation for external quality assurance visits and MFHEA audits.
- A yearly review, with changes reported to the body where its rules require it.
Why recognition is lost after it is won
Getting accredited and staying accredited are different problems. The first is a submission. The second is a system that keeps producing evidence long after the person who wrote the submission has moved on.
Providers lose recognition, or come close to it, for predictable reasons: assessment decisions that drift apart between assessors, no record of standardisation ever happening, internal verification that exists on paper but produces no sampling evidence, and self-evaluation written the week before a review rather than maintained through the year. None of those are hard problems. They are just problems nobody owns until someone asks.
What we build
- An internal quality assurance policy that names who does what, how often, and what evidence it generates.
- Sampling plans and verification records that stand up to inspection rather than describing an intention.
- Standardisation arrangements so assessors reach the same decision on the same evidence.
- Assessment verification, including how a disputed decision is escalated and resolved.
- Self-evaluation maintained through the year, with an improvement log that shows what changed as a result.
The test we apply is simple. If a regulator, an awarding body or a client asked tomorrow for evidence that your assessment is consistent, could you produce it without writing anything new? If not, the system is not finished.
Readiness review before someone else reviews you
We run institutional readiness reviews and self-assessment reports against the standards that apply to you, before a regulator does. The point is to find the gaps while they are still cheap to close.
For a Maltese provider
- Your internal quality assurance policy.
- The eleven national standards MFHEA expects it to address.
For a UK provider
- The conditions of recognition your awarding organisation is bound by.
- The obligations that flow down from those conditions to you.
What a review actually checks
A review is not looking for good intentions. It is looking for evidence that consistency happens and is recorded. These are the questions a reviewer asks, and what we put in place so the answer is already on file.
| Area | The question a reviewer asks | What we put in place |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment consistency | Do assessors reach the same decision on the same evidence? | Standardisation arrangements and records |
| Internal verification | Is sampling happening, and can you show it? | An IQA plan with real sampling and verification records |
| Self-evaluation | Is it maintained, or written the week before? | A living self-assessment report with an improvement log |
| Escalation | How is a disputed decision resolved? | A documented verification and appeal route |
| Currency | Is provision still delivered to the standard? | Scheduled review against the conditions in force |
How we put quality assurance in place
Diagnose
We map your current arrangements against the standards that apply and mark, honestly, what exists, what exists only on paper, and what is missing.
Build the system
We write the IQA policy, the sampling plans, the standardisation and the escalation routes, naming who does what and how often, so the system has an owner.
Populate the evidence
We get the first cycle of records in place, so the system is producing evidence rather than describing an intention to.
Mock review and hand over
We run a readiness review as a regulator would, close the gaps it finds, and hand the running system to a named person on your side.
Where the standards come from
Malta, MFHEA
A licensed Maltese provider is expected to address MFHEA's internal quality assurance policy and its eleven national standards. We build to those.
United Kingdom
The conditions of recognition your awarding organisation is bound by flow down to you as a centre. We build the arrangements those conditions require.
CPD and internal
Even without a regulator, buyers and boards increasingly want evidence that delivery is consistent and outcomes are real. The same system provides it.
The year after accreditation
The dangerous period is not the submission. It is the quiet year that follows. The person who wrote it moves on, the pressure lifts, and arrangements that looked complete on paper stop producing anything. Then a review is scheduled, and a provider accredited correctly cannot evidence a single consistent assessment decision from the last twelve months. Quality assurance is a system, not a document.
How a system quietly decays
- Sampling named in a policy but never actually done, or never recorded.
- Standardisation that lives in a shared belief the assessors agree, with no meeting to prove it.
- A self-evaluation written the week before an inspection, which tells a reviewer exactly that.
What we install instead
- An internal quality assurance plan with an owner and a calendar, so sampling happens on schedule.
- Standardisation arrangements that produce records, so consistency is demonstrable, not asserted.
- An escalation route for disputed decisions, so a disagreement resolves into evidence.
- A living self-assessment report with an improvement log, showing what you changed and why.
If a regulator, awarding body or serious client asked tomorrow for evidence that your assessment is consistent, could you produce it without writing anything new? If no, the system is not finished, however good it looks. We would rather find that gap in a readiness review we run than have a regulator find it in one you cannot reschedule.
Who owns the system after we leave
A quality system that depends on the person who built it is not a system, it is a dependency with better paperwork. The point is routines that keep producing evidence after we are gone, owned by someone on your side who can run them without us. So we build for handover from the start:
- A named owner on your team, not a filing cabinet, accountable for the cycle.
- Routines written to be run, so your owner runs the sampling, verification and standardisation without decoding someone else's shorthand.
- The first full cycle recorded together, so the evidence exists and the owner has done it once with us beside them, not just read about it.
A system that survives a staff change and a surprise inspection alike. When a body asks how you assure quality, the answer is a running record your own team maintains, not a promise to pull something together before the next visit. It also lowers the cost of every review after the first.
Common questions
What is quality assurance in learning and development?
It is the set of checks that make sure a programme is designed, delivered and assessed to a consistent standard. It covers internal quality assurance, external quality assurance, assessment verification, standardisation and self-evaluation.
What is the difference between internal and external quality assurance?
Internal quality assurance is the sampling and verification you carry out yourself to confirm assessment decisions are consistent. External quality assurance is the same scrutiny applied from outside, usually by an awarding organisation or a regulator.
We are already accredited. Why would we need this?
Because accreditation is a decision taken once and reviewed repeatedly. Most providers who get into difficulty were accredited correctly and then could not evidence consistency at the next review.
Can you review our arrangements before a regulator does?
Yes. We run readiness reviews and self-assessment reports against the standards that apply to you, so the gaps are found while they are still cheap to close.
Do you write the self-assessment report for us?
We set it up and get the first version in place with you, built as a living document with an improvement log rather than a one-off written for a review. The aim is that a named person on your side can keep it current afterwards, not depend on us each year.
Can you run a mock inspection?
Yes. A readiness review is exactly that: we examine your evidence the way a regulator or awarding body would, produce a written findings report, and help you close the gaps before the real review lands.
How often do sampling and standardisation need to happen?
It depends on the body's expectations and your volume of assessment. We set a schedule that satisfies the standard and is realistic to keep, and we write it into the plan with a named owner so it actually happens.
Who owns the quality system after you finish?
A named person on your side. We build the system to run without us and hand it over with the first cycle of evidence in place, rather than leaving you dependent on us at every review.
What if we already have a policy but no evidence?
That is the most common starting point, and it is exactly what reviews fail on. A policy without records proves nothing, so we get the first cycle of sampling, verification and standardisation recorded, so the system produces evidence rather than intentions.
Can you support us through a real inspection, not just a mock one?
Yes. As well as running the readiness review beforehand, we can prepare the evidence, brief the team and support you during the actual review.
How long does it take to put a quality system in place?
It depends on how much already exists and how much has to be built from nothing. A provider with policies but no evidence is a faster job than one starting from a blank sheet, because the structure is there and what is missing is the records. We agree a scope and a realistic timeline, get the first cycle of sampling, verification and standardisation recorded, run a readiness review, and hand a running system to a named owner on your side. The point is not a document by a deadline, it is a system that keeps producing evidence after we have gone.
FreeCourse diagnostic
Send us one course. We'll tell you what it needs, free.
Share one course or programme you already run, or the slides and notes behind it. After a short first call, we review it at no charge and send you a written note on what it needs and which package fits, within a few working days.
- One course or programme, reviewed by a named person
- A written note on what it needs
- The package that fits, so you know where to start
- No charge and no obligation
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We design and run quality assurance in line with the principles of ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO/IEC 27001 (information security). See how we apply each standard.