SQA Accreditation, the regulator of Scottish Vocational Qualifications, recently undertook a number of quality monitoring audits on the delivery of EAL qualifications in our recognised centres.
A number of areas of improvement were identified. To address these, we would like to remind all EAL recognised centres of their obligations to meet the requirements set out in the centre agreement and qualification standards of our delivery manuals. There are also a number of specific areas requiring action by centres by 30 June 2016.
We would be grateful if you could ensure that all of the documents listed below are uploaded to Smarter Touch by 30 June 2016:
- All staff CVs and qualification certificates.
- Your centre’s complaints policy and/or procedure - referencing how candidates can escalate a complaint to the awarding body (EAL) or to SQA Accreditation as the regulator and where appropriate, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO).
- Your appeals policy and/or procedure, referencing all the awarding bodies your centre works with (including EAL).
- All documents, policies and procedures that support arrangements to prevent and investigate allegations of malpractice. These should include ‘maladministration’ as referenced in EAL’s Centre Recognition Requirements (Section 17 ‘Policies and Procedures’).
Your centre and staff should also operate in accordance with the Centre Guidance document – Being a Quality Assurer. Quality Assurers should:
- Observe assessors making decisions
- Interview assessors
- Interview candidates
- Study the collection of evidence (the portfolio) which has been assessed by the Assessor, and record both interim and final sampling
All centres need to maintain records of the quality monitoring that they are undertaking and must retain all records associated with internal quality assurance for 3 years.
All the documents referenced above can be located in the EAL Smarter Touch documents library.
