Quality Assuring Learning and Development - 2024 update
Continuous learning and professional development are essential in our sector for effective service delivery, engaging customers and delivering organisational success, and choosing the right training provider is a critical decision.
The quality of education and training programmes can significantly impact a professional’s ability to develop their skills, their performance, their job satisfaction, and their ability to deliver for their clients and/or employer.
Therefore, choosing a training provider with a strong quality assurance (QA) rating is essential. QA ratings indicate how well a provider is meeting or exceeding a range of quality criteria.
A year ago, CIMSPA introduced a new quality assurance framework for Education Partners. Starting with partners that are training providers, organisations have undergone detailed reviews against the framework which rate them across three areas:
- Quality of Education
- Learner Journey
- Marketing and Promotion
Find out more about the framework and process.
Following the review, partners receive one of three ratings:
- Enhancing (three star) – providers identified as enhancing have evidenced good practice within their operations, processes, and procedures, and are seen to be offering the highest quality education provision to its learners/participants by CIMSPA.
- Enabling (two star) – providers identified as enabling have evidenced some good practice within their operations, processes, and procedures. CIMSPA will provide clear actions to support the development of the provider partner to ensure high quality education provision to its learners/participants.
- Emerging (one star) – providers identified as emerging have key actions which need to be completed within a specified time frame, to ensure that they meet CIMSPA standards and expectations of provider partners. CIMSPA will provide bespoke support to providers identified as emerging to ensure sufficient quality developments to achieve an enabling or enhancing outcome, following the next quality assurance review.
In the first year a total of 181 provider partners have successfully completed the quality assurance review process and have received an outcome:
- 58% of providers have achieved an Enhancing outcome
- 36% have achieved an Enabling outcome
- 6% have achieved an Emerging outcome
Natasha Eason, Associate Director – Education, at CIMSPA said,
“It’s been great to see how provider partners have embraced the quality assurance framework. From the point at which we first consulted with them on a new framework, they have been super keen to demonstrate the dedication that they have to ensuring that they are offering the best quality experience and outcomes to their learners.
Over half of providers that have undergone the review have achieved the highest, 3-star Enhancing outcome, so it is clear that most providers are meeting or exceeding expectations, with a significant portion demonstrating advanced levels of quality. Where providers are achieving Emerging or Enabling outcomes, we’re supporting them with a tailored action plan to help them develop their processes and practice.”
In the coming months, the quality assurance reviews based on the framework will be extended to other categories of education partners including Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) providers and Awarding Organisations (AO). This is being done following in-depth consultation with partners and takes into account the regulated nature of the provision that they offer.
We will also continue to review and develop the quality assurance process and welcome feedback from providers.
Natasha said,
“We’re continuing to pilot quality assurance reviews with a number of our HE, FE and AO partners. It’s vital that we create a balance between the framework and consider those that are solely providing already regulated qualifications and those that are delivering provision mapped to the sector’s Professional Standards.”
“The aim is to ensure that professionals working in the sector, employers and those looking to start a career in the sector, can easily identify education providers that have demonstrated a commitment to the highest quality learning and development provision.”
“We’re continuing to optimise the quality assurance process to ensure that we minimise the administrative input required and reducing the resource needed from providers to support a review. We are also implementing plans to create greater awareness of each review outcome so that potential learners and employers can recognise and understand the Enhancing, Enabling and Emerging ratings.”
“We will also continue to review and develop the quality assurance process and welcome feedback from providers as we work together to shape the future of quality education in our sector.”
The Endorsed Training Directory now features quality assurance ratings for providers that have completed a review.
Access the Directory to find courses, qualifications and flexible CPD
Providers that achieve the 3-star Enhancing outcome following their quality assurance review can become a provider within the Training Academy for Sport and Physical Activity.
Find a Training Academy course
