8 Quality assurance Centre and qualification approval As part of the approval process, your centre must make sure that the resource
requirements listed below are in place before offering the qualification.
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Centres must have appropriate physical resources (for example equipment, IT,
learning materials, teaching rooms) to support the delivery and assessment of
the qualification.
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Staff involved in the assessment process must have relevant expertise and/or
occupational experience.
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There must be systems in place to ensure continuing professional development
for staff delivering the qualification.
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Centres must have in place appropriate health and safety policies relating to the
use of equipment by learners.
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Centres must deliver the qualification in accordance with current equality and
diversity legislation and/or regulations.
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Centres should refer to the
Further information for teachers and assessors section
in individual units to check for any specific resources required.
Continuing quality assurance and standards verification On an annual basis, we produce the
BTEC International Quality Assurance Handbook .
It contains detailed guidance on the quality processes required to underpin robust
assessment and internal verification.
The key principles of quality assurance are that:
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a centre delivering BTEC programmes must be an approved centre, and must
have approval for the programmes or groups of programmes that it is
delivering
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the centre agrees, as part of gaining approval, to abide by specific terms and
conditions around the effective delivery and quality assurance of assessment;
the centre must abide by these conditions throughout the period of delivery
•
Pearson makes available to approved centres resources and processes that
exemplify assessment and appropriate standards. Approved centres must use
these to ensure that all staff delivering BTEC qualifications keep up to date with
the guidance on assessment
•
an approved centre must follow agreed protocols for standardisation of
assessors and verifiers, for the planning, monitoring and recording of
assessment processes, and for dealing with special circumstances,
appeals and malpractice.
The approach of quality-assured assessment is through a partnership between
an approved centre and Pearson. We will make sure that each centre follows best
practice and employs appropriate technology to support quality-assurance processes,
where practicable. We work to support centres and seek to make sure that our
quality-assurance processes do not place undue bureaucratic processes on centres.
We monitor and support centres in the effective operation of assessment and
quality assurance.