Edexcel Assured

Edexcel Assured

Your independent quality benchmark

1

www.edexcel.com/assured

What is the Edexcel Assured service?

‘Edexcel Assured’ is an independently verified quality mark from Pearson that’s ideal for anyone delivering training or learning programmes that are designed, taught and assessed in-house.

This service evaluates your quality processes, and recognises and endorses high quality institutions.

How does Edexcel Assured work?

To achieve Edexcel Assured status, we will review your centre’s quality management against standards that we have developed from over 100 years of experience in education and training.

We will work with you to ensure your quality processes reach our standard.

One of our expert quality advisors will visit your site, and may conduct follow-up visits where required to help you meet the Edexcel Assured quality standard. Once achieved you will be able to promote your Edexcel Assured status, and claim Edexcel Assured certificates for all learners who successfully complete your programmes.

Why become an Edexcel Assured centre?

1. Set an international benchmark – by demonstrating that your centre meets the Edexcel Assured quality criteria, you ensure that each learner on each programme receives the same standard of education and training provision, whoever they are, and wherever they take the course.

2. Stand out from the crowd – Show all your stakeholders that you’re serious about quality.

Assured centres can use the Edexcel Assured logo on promotional materials*, and claim certificates featuring the Edexcel Assured logo alongside your centres logo.

3. Improve your quality management – when our quality advisors review the validity and reliability of your quality procedures, you get detailed feedback on how you can improve your quality systems. Annual visits thereafter help you to continuously improve your quality standard.

4. Assure your learners with an independent benchmark from a credible authority on standards in education and training – becoming Edexcel Assured sends a clear message to current and prospective learners that your organisation is accountable and responsible, providing important reassurance to your students.

5. One simple process, to endorse all your programmes – because we review your organisation, and not individual programmes, Edexcel Assured status involves only one centre-level review. However once achieved, you can apply it to as many programmes as you wish. This means you can receive a quality endorsement for all your programmes from just one review. *Use of the Edexcel Assured logo is subject to adherence with our Third Party Guidelines.

2

www.edexcel.com/assured

Who we work with:

3

Who is Edexcel Assured for?

Training providers such as Babcock and ITEC

• Corporate training providers – Edexcel Assured helps training providers to assure consistent standards across multiple programmes, delivery locations, and different trainers, giving them verifiable proof of their credentials to promote to clients.

International employers including BT, McDonalds and Flybe

•

Corporations with in-house programmes – Edexcel Assured is an ideal product for companies conducting their own training, as it helps them provide consistency and accuracy across multiple sites or with multiple assessors, ensuring all employees receive the same training provision.

Over 5,400 international education institutions

•

Educational institutions (schools, colleges and universities), professional bodies and public sector organisations, who provide their own education and training programmes.

www.edexcel.com/assured

How do we ‘assure’ a centre?

A Quality Advisor will review your centre against our five quality indicators. To do this, your centre will need to supply evidence to support your centre’s quality systems against each indicator, and we will follow this up with a visit to your centre to complete the review. After this you will be granted Edexcel Assured status either unconditionally, where your centre meets all our requirements, or conditionally, where there is still work to do in order to achieve assured status.

1. Conditional Edexcel Assured Status*

Partial Assurance. Not all of the criteria have been met, and we will continue to work with you to ensure you achieve unconditional status in the shortest, most appropriate amount of time. A further site visit will be required to confirm your unconditional status.

2. Unconditional Edexcel Assured Status*

Full assurance. Your centre has adequately met all of our quality criteria, and will be able to claim certificates for all programmes. This status is valid for 1 year, and can be renewed annually by a site review from our quality advisors.

*Pearson reserves the right not to award Edexcel Assured status or to withdraw the Edexcel Assured brand if serious quality issues are found.

4

www.edexcel.com/assured

Our 5 Quality Indicators for Edexcel Assured 1. Learner Support

• Information - learners are provided with information on the programme, told what they can expect and what their own responsibilities will be • Meets needs -learners are able to join programmes that meet their needs • Support - learners are provided with support that takes account of their needs and enables them to achieve outcomes • Feedback - learners are invited to provide feedback on the programme and are informed of how to make complaints and appeals

2. Resources & Environment

• Environment - a safe and healthy environment conducive to delivery of the programme • Physical resources - centres provide access to physical resources in sufficient quantity and quality for successful programme delivery • Teaching staff - centres have sufficient and suitably qualified and experienced staff, and opportunities for continuous professional development

3. Quality Management System

• Policy, procedures and designated individuals - to ensure the quality of current programme(s), and future programme(s) that provide guiding principles, and monitor implementation.

• Assessment - all assessment must have clearly defined outcomes, assessment methods, and assessment criteria or a marking scheme • Safeguards - against any form of malpractice by staff and learners, including logging of complaints and appeals

4. Administrative Arrangement

• Responsibility - there are clear lines of responsibility for the delivery of programme(s) within the scope of the Edexcel Assured Service • Learner records - providing a clear audit trail of all learner activity for at least three years after completion • Certification - there is a secure procedure for the claiming and issuing certificates that is monitored to ensure compliance

5. Assessment & Verification*

• Criteria - assessment decisions are made against pre-set criteria or mark schemes which check that the stated outcomes have been achieved • Information - assessment details, expectations and results are clearly indicated, and learners provided with performance feedback.

• Verification - centre has a process for assessment that checks validity, reliability, and provides feedback and support to the assessor • Standardisation - assessment decisions are standardised across assessors

*If learners are not assessed, this does not apply.

5

www.edexcel.com/assured

What gives Pearson the authority to measure another organisation on quality?

• Pearson is the world’s leading awarding organisation – with over 100 years of education and training experience, in over 100 countries, we have the expertise and authority to audit, benchmark, and independently verify your quality processes, against world-class standards.

•

We’re serious about quality – we know that without rigorous quality assurance, a certificate is worth no more than the paper it is written on. That’s why best-practice quality procedures underline everything we do, and we practice what we preach, being independently regulated by UK regulator Ofqual to ensure our quality standards are rigorous, valid and reliable.

•

Our Edexcel qualifications are widely taught, recognised and respected, and the standards we apply in all Edexcel qualifications are the same standards provided by the Edexcel Assured service.

NB. Edexcel Assured applies the quality processes used in Edexcel qualifications to your organisation, utilising our experience to regulate your quality processes. The programmes are however not regulated by Ofqual, which Edexcel qualifications are.

6

www.edexcel.com/assured

Complementary Pearson Services As part of Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, we provide a wide range of complementary services to Edexcel Assured which you may be interested in.

Customised Qualifications Service

Edexcel and BTEC Qualifications

As well as quality procedures, we also have extensive experience in content and assessment development, benchmarking qualifications to relevant employer and/or social needs and mapping qualification standards to national and international frameworks.

If these services are of interest to you, the Customised Qualifications service, using Pearson’s Self Regulated Framework can help. It provides wide ranging consultancy services to help a variety of educational stakeholders to achieve their goals, and covers all aspects of qualification design, delivery and assessment.

With thousands of pre-developed qualifications available, across 10 levels and in wide-ranging specialist topics, there’s a BTEC or Edexcel qualification to suit any need.

These qualifications can be a great alternative to providing your own qualifications, as there are no development costs, and many of them are Ofqual regulated, meaning that they sit on internationally recognised frameworks which enable easy progression and recognition to further studies or employment.

To find out more, contact your local representative at: www.edexcel.com/mea.

Pearson Educational Resources

Find out more about Edexcel and BTEC qualifications: www.edexcel.com/international.

Pearson is also the world’s largest educational publisher, providing market-leading resources from textbooks to education management systems and virtual learning environments, with recognised brands such as Pearson Fronter, Longman and Prentice Hall. From pre-school to post-graduate, Pearson can provide you with engaging and relevant resources to help teachers, learners and institutions reach their potential.

Find our more about Pearson’s educational resources www.pearson.com/middleeast.

7

www.edexcel.com/assured

Your 4-step process to becoming Edexcel Assured Centre: STEP 1: Contact your local Edexcel Assured representative at enquiries.middleeast@pearson.com to discuss your requirements. Our representative can help you decide whether Edexcel Assured is right for you, and will be your point of reference and guide through the approval process.

STEP 2: We’ll send you the relevant Edexcel Assured Guidance and Policy Documents, including the Edexcel Assured Application Form for you to complete and return to: internationalapprovals@pearson.com

STEP 3: A Quality Advisor will visit your centre to conduct a review of your quality management system.

STEP 4: (a) If all quality indicators are met, you’ll receive a letter confirming your Unconditional Edexcel Assured Status immediately for 1 year, as well as marketing information and files for using the Edexcel Assured logo.

STEP 4: (b) If not all quality indicators are met, we’ll grant Conditional Edexcel Assured Status, which will allow you to register learners but not to claim certificates. We’ll then work with you to improve quality systems to achieve Unconditional Edexcel Assured Status, which will follow a second site visit.

✓ YOUR CENTRE IS

EDEXCEL ASSURED

Contact your local team: enquiries.middleeast@pearson.com www.edexcel.com/mea

8

www.edexcel.com/assured

Z034124

Find out more information: www.edexcel.com/assured