Preparing for an external quality assurance review

Register your learners

Make the most of the support available by registering your learners early through the Portal. The Portal User Guide, explains how to do this.

Once you have registered learners, we’ll carry out at least one external quality assurance review each session, between 1 August and 31 July. Your EQA will contact you to suggest a date and time to conduct your external quality assurance review. If this date is not suitable work with them to agree a date and time.

You can request up to 2 free reviews each session for each QA group.

Work with your EQA

You’ll be allocated an EQA, per QA Group once you have registered learners. Most reviews will take place remotely, however face-to-face reviews are available on request or where required as part of the qualification.

Send the following documents

View our User Guide to the External Quality Assurance Review Report and send all supporting evidence to the EQA at least 48 hours ahead of your review, along with:

4 weeks ahead of the review:

Assessment plans- to provide details of student achievement for all programmes covered as part of the review and allocated Assessor(s) and IQA(s) details.
Internal Quality Assurance plans – to provide details of learners and Assessor covered as part of IQA sampling.

48 hours ahead of the review.

Centre feedback form – to help us to ensure our qualifications meet the needs of you and your learners.
Learner feedback form - select 2 learners to share feedback about their experience on the qualification. By completing this form, you are providing permission for the learners to be contacted.
Learner evidence - gather all learner evidence and IQA documents for all learners on the sampling plan. The EQA may need to expand their sample on the day of the review, be prepared to provide further evidence if requested.

Where the qualification:

covers skills and knowledge - send one piece of knowledge evidence and one piece of skills evidence per learner, and vary assessment methods and units across learners
involves a research project - send one full research project for a sampled learner
requires a longitudinal study - send one full longitudinal study for a sampled learner
contains a graded unit rather than pass/refer - send all evidence relating to the final grade and provide a range of units over the learner sample.

Failure to send the above information within the specified timescales will result in your external quality assurance review being cancelled. Should the review be cancelled, a new date will be arranged in line with EQA availability. This may result in delays to certificate claims.

If during the review the EQA identifies missing evidence, this will be requested during the review, failure to supply this during the review will result in an action on the report and a potential delay in certification of results.

View your sampling plan

Once your EQA has the required information, they’ll send you a sampling plan identifying which learners’ evidence will be subject to review. You should inform the EQA if they’ve selected an inactive learner for sampling, so they can choose another learner.

Withdraw any inactive learners on the Portal in a timely manner, so NCFE records are accurate and up to date and the sample selected by your EQA review is correct. Failure to withdraw learners in a timely manner will result in an action on your report.

Access previous reports

If this isn’t your first review, refer to previous external quality assurance reports via the Portal and make sure all actions have been addressed.

Keep up informed

Let us know if there’s a conflict of interest we need to be aware of and complete NCFE’s conflicts of interest declaration for centres form.
Let us know if you’ve applied special considerations, reasonable adjustments, or adapted any assessments since your last review.

You can consult our policies page for more details.  

For more information about the review:

Read our User guide to the external quality assurance report
Build your quality file with our course file documents
Explore QualHub for all supporting documents.

Face to face reviews

If the visit is taking place face to face learner evidence and IQA documents for all learners on the sampling plan must be available to view at your centre on the day of the review. The EQA may select further samples on the day.

E-portfolios

If you’re using e-portfolio, send the EQA secure login details so they can access the system.

Claim your learners’ certificates

Following your review, use the Portal to claim certificates for completed learners. Certificates are issued within 24 hours.

If you have Direct Claims Status (DCS), certificates will be issued automatically. Read more about DCS on our dedicated DCS page.

Share your feedback

We’re very keen to hear about your experience, so please share your feedback with us. Your Programme Contact will receive a survey after the review, which asks for your comments and suggestions. This feedback helps us to achieve our aim to provide world class customer service.

Closure of QualHub

Please note that QualHub is now closed, please do not start any new or additional approvals, attempt to complete any enquiries or access resources here.

We have moved all qualifications, resources, supporting materials and information, documents and forms from QualHub to the NCFE website. This includes our External Assessment Timetable, policies, the replacement certificates forms, the access arrangement request form and more.

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