User Guide to the Annual Monitoring Report

What is an Annual Monitoring Review (AMR)?

The focus of this review is to quality assure a centre’s management and administration to ensure they remain compliant with our approval criteria. No learners will be sampled as part of this review, as this will be covered as part of an external quality assurance or moderation review.

Centres will be allocated a Quality Reviewer (QR), who will conduct the AMR across all qualification groups. This means centre information around management and administration will only be reviewed once a year.

This User Guide to the Annual Monitoring Report will support centres when planning for reviews. The guide outlines the criteria that the QR will check as part of the AMR process, the evidence centres can provide to meet each criterion and how the centre risk status is calculated following the AMR.

AMR self assessment form

If you’ve had an AMR in a previous session your QR will send a link to complete an AMR self assessment form before the review. This asks if you’ve made any changes to your policies and procedures, so if no changes have been made you do not need to reupload documents your QR has already reviewed.

Centre grading

As a result of the AMR, centres will be awarded a risk status based on the evidence reviewed. This status will be displayed on the front of the annual monitoring report and will also show on all individual external quality assurance reports for the centre.

How is the risk status achieved?

Each criterion in section 3 of the AMR is profiled as being high/medium/low risk, as identified within this guidance document.

Each criterion can be marked as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within the report, if a ‘no’ is selected this will trigger the risk level applied to that question.

A ‘no’ would be applied when a centre is unable to satisfy the evidence requirements of an individual criterion. This guide outlines exactly what a QR will be looking for to satisfy each criterion, giving examples of evidence a centre could show to support discussions.

The overall centre risk status will be the highest individual criterion risk level that has been triggered in section 3 of the report.

For example, if ‘no’ is applied to both a medium and high-rated criterion, the centre’s overall risk status would be high.

What is the impact of each risk status?

High risk – If a centre is rated as high risk an interim AMR would be arranged with the QR later in the session, to review what progress has been made with the actions set.

Medium and low risk – Any actions set for the centre would be reviewed at the next planned AMR, which would be in the following session.

The risk status of a centre may be used to inform an external quality assurance review and may be considered when an External Quality Assurer (EQA) selects the sample size they wish to review.

The risk status of a centre will not impact Direct Claim Status (DCS) of individual qualifications within a centre. DCS continues to be monitored via the external quality assurance process.

How long will a risk status last?

For centres who achieve either a medium or low risk status, this status will be applied for 12 months. It will be reviewed at the next AMR scheduled for the following session.

If a centre is given a high-risk status, an interim review will be arranged with the QR to check progress made towards actions set. The centre’s risk status could change during this review depending on evidence seen.

During the session if NCFE is made aware of any instances where a centre has not been compliant with our policies and procedures and an investigation takes place, the result of this investigation could impact and change a centre’s risk status. In such cases, the centre would be made aware through the investigation process. The Provider Assurance team would also inform the allocated QR alongside the sector-specific External Quality Assurer(s). The new risk status would remain until the next AMR takes place.

The report sections in detail

Over the following pages we’ll look at each section of the report.

You’ll find statements included in the report followed by an explanation. The explanations will detail what the QR is looking for and examples of evidence which could be presented to meet the criteria.

Please note that these explanations are not intended to be exhaustive. There is more than one way to a achieve a successful outcome for each criterion, if further clarification is required centres should speak to their QR about how to move forward.