Why do we need centre policies and procedures?
To ensure that your quality assurance continues to meet BTEC requirements for Pearson Centre Approval and Recognition, we advise that you should develop and maintain policies and procedures that support you to have: |
- operational quality systems appropriate to your centre’s size that enable quality assurance management, review and improvement
- sufficient records that demonstrate the use of the quality systems and the outcomes of key monitoring activities
- effective internal and external communications
- systems that are compliant with current BTEC and regulatory requirements
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Your centre policies and procedures should be available if requested by Pearson, and the Holistic Review (part of the BTEC Quality Assurance Cycle) involves a review of the implementation of these policies to ensure accurate outcomes for learners.
Your centre policies and procedures should be reviewed annually and updated where necessary. |
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What policies are required?
Centres require policies and procedures that cover key aspects of BTEC quality assurance and management. This includes: |
- Registration and Certification of Learners
- Assessment
- Internal Verification
- Distance and/or Blended Learning
- Plagiarism and Assessment Malpractice (including the use of AI*)
- Appeals and Complaints
- Consortia/ Collaborative arrangements policy & operational procedures (if appropriate)
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*Please see the Centre Guide to Plagiarism for further information on the use of AI. This can be located on our Quality Assurance webpage.
You will need to have other centre policies and procedures for non BTEC specific aspects for your organisation’s needs. |
- Equality and Diversity
- Safeguarding
- Health and Safety (including any arrangements for Employer Involvement)
- Special Consideration and Reasonable Adjustment
- Recognition of Prior Learning
- Contingency and Adverse Effects (such as a response to a cyber-attack)
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Do centres need to have separate BTEC policies and procedures?
You can either choose to have separate BTEC policies and procedure documents or you can incorporate them into your overarching centre policies and procedures with specific reference made to individual BTEC procedures. |
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What support is available for creating centre policies and procedures?
The BTEC Centre Guide to Policies and Procedures for vocational qualifications provides guidance and suggested policy templates for use. This can be located on our Quality Assurance webpage under the useful documents section.
Please note: the exemplar policies on their own are not sufficient to meet the requirements of Pearson quality assurance. Each policy is required to be contextualised to your centre. This will involve adding specific procedures your centre has in place to meet the policy requirements, such as named staff roles and responsibilities, key dates, and actions.
You should also view our policies for centres webpage, which can be found here. |
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Do learners need a copy of our centre policies and procedures?
Your centre policies and procedures may be available on your Centre website or intranet, this is a centre decision.
Upon commencing a BTEC programme, learners should be issued with a subject specific Learner Handbook that covers relevant policies and procedures such as Assessment, Malpractice and Appeals. Please refer to the Template for Learner Handbook and Induction of BTEC Learners. These can be located in the Resources section of our Quality Assurance webpages here, under the Centre Quality templates drop down option. |
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Managing vocational quality
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. |  |
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| Back to Vocational Quality Assurance support index. |
