SharePoint  

Awarding Bodies should review their SharePoint site on a regular basis to keep it up to date, and all documentation should be assigned to one or more principle. Additionally, SharePoint sites should be updated as part of your document control process.  

Contact your regulation to update access permissions to SharePoint when staff changes occur, to ensure only approved staff can access documentation. 

 Accessibility Requirements 

We have a legal responsibility to ensure all digital services are designed and developed to meet accessibility requirements, including any documents available from our website, and new and existing services. This ensures we meet the Public Sector Bodies (Website and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulation 2018.

We are unable to provide access to any externally developed documents that do not meet accessibility requirements. Therefore, standard setting organisations and awarding bodies must  to undertake accessibility checks to ensure  documents are fully accessible before submitting them to SQA Accreditation.    

Registering learners during the lapsing period 

We would like to remind awarding bodies about the rules regarding registering learners during lapsing periods. This is the period between the accreditation end date and the certification end date.   

Awarding bodies should discourage their providers from registering new learners in the lapsing period and encourage them to register them on the most recent versions of accredited qualifications. If learners are registered in the lapsing period, this should only be done where the learner has a realistic chance of completing the qualification by the certification end date. Registering learners in the lapsing period should be seen as the exception, and awarding bodies should ensure they have effective, reliable and secure systems for the registration and certification of learners to minimise the number of registrations during the lapsing period.  

Public Reporting

Since our last newsletter we have published an Audit Report and Action Plan for Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB).  We have also published Provider Monitoring Reports and Action Plans for: 

• ITC First
• Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB)
• National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health (NEBOSH)

These can be found in the Public Reporting section of our website along with the most recent audit and Provider Monitoring Reports for all approved awarding bodies. 

Providers List

We recently informed you about the change to registration information required within the provider list. Following feedback from awarding bodies, we have decided to revert to the original data format which asks for registrations and certifications within the last 12 months. We now require awarding bodies to state whether each provider is active or inactive. This will allow us to capture information about providers who have not had registrations or certifications within the last 12 months but may have active learners.

ACG Decision Lists

Information on new developments, such as the approval of a new awarding body or a new qualification, can be found on the regularly updated Accreditation Co-ordination Group (ACG) decision list.

Listing and Lapsing Reports

For the latest information about live qualifications, please check out the Listing Report. For information about qualifications which are lapsing and finishing in the next four months, please have a look at the Lapsing Report. You can find both on our website.

Apprenticeship Approvals Group 

Information relating to the Apprenticeship Approvals Group (AAG), including the minutes for its meetings, can be found on the Skills Development Scotland website.