BTEC Centre Check In Activity

A: The Centre Check in Activity is part of centre quality assurance within the BTEC Quality Assurance Cycle.

The aim of the activity is to support the Quality Nominee (QN) to ensure that all QA processes are in place and effective with a view to timely and accurate claims leading to safe certification.

The VQAM role is supportive, and this activity is intended to reassure centres that they have everything in place that will ultimately lead to a safe and successful outcome for learners, particularly at the point of Standards Verification.

The activity will also allow us to support centres with any issues that have been identified during the previous academic year and ensure that they have been successfully addressed.

More details can be found in our Centre Guide to Quality Assurance.

A: Not everyone will need a centre check-in, and there are several reasons we might reach out to you to arrange one, including:

• You’re a new centre who will benefit from quality assurance support
• You haven’t had a centre check-in in the past two years
• You had some issues during last year’s quality assurance cycle that will benefit from support, such as:
  • referral from the quality management team
  • late and/or inaccurate claims from the previous academic year
  • quality policies/procedures that need to be more thorough
• You needed a temporary structure due to delivering an incorrect combination of internal units
• Random selection

A: From September to April, the vocational quality assurance managers (VQAMs) will reach out to selected centres in their region for a centre check-in activity. Please note, this activity does not prevent any centre contacting the team to request support in the normal way.

A: To find out who your centre's named VQAM is, please view the VQAM Regional Map.

It may be the case that a VQAM outside of your region is allocated to your centre to carry out the Centre Check in Activity. This is normal, depending on the caseload of centres per VQAM.

A: Your VQAM will contact you to arrange a support call that will normally be completely remotely. We anticipate this to take approximately 30 minutes.

The purpose of the activity is to focus on centre assessment standards to ensure the effective delivery of qualifications. During the call, the VQAM will discuss quality assurance arrangements with the Quality Nominee and identify any issues, any areas where support would be welcome, signpost existing support, and ensure the QN knows how to contact the VQAM team.

This may involve (this list is not exhaustive):

• Discussion of quality assurance processes, procedures, and policies for your BTEC programmes
• Review of implementation of the above to ensure accurate outcomes for learners, to include centre procedures for timely claims in line with Pearson published deadlines.

The Vocational Quality Assurance Manager will:

• Work with you to ensure continual improvement.
• Provide or signpost support available.
• Identify any actions to improve programme delivery or QA systems.

A: Yes, we have produced a ‘guide for successful claims and results’ that will cover a selection of possible discussion points. This can also be found in our Centre Guide to Quality Assurance (Appendix B).

You will not be required to collate or present any evidence at the initial meeting

A: Following your check-in, your VQAM will email you a summary of the check-in and include any advice or recommendations. You might want to arrange for your VQAM to visit your centre or arrange a second call so you can include more of your BTEC team. You will then be contacted at key points in the academic year as agreed with your VQAM and for continued support.

Please Note: 

• The Quality Nominee will retain overall responsibility for quality assurance within the centre, including disseminating information to the BTEC teaching teams.
• The VQAM team can support with staff development sessions in exceptional circumstances, but this will not be available on a regular basis due to the volume of centres to be seen. Guidance will be provided in respect of the appropriate existing online and on-demand offer, or any training available from the Training from Pearson page.

For additional help and support for Quality Nominees and BTEC delivery teams, we have created dedicated quality assurance webpages that can be accessed via the Home of Quality Assurance. These webpages provide easy access to quality assurance guides, videos and resources, FAQs, regular updates, training events, live chat with an expert and much more.

We recommend Quality Nominees and BTEC staff join our Quality Nominees Group, here you can ask questions directly to the Vocational Quality Assurance Management team, browse posts/updates and share ideas and good practice with colleagues.