Embedding the new Ofqual Principles into the Everyday

If you are an Awarding Organisation (AO) you could be forgiven (not by Ofqual!) for missing the formal addition of the new principles into the Ofqual conditions in December 2025, after all, the apprenticeship assessment reforms have somewhat taken over everything lately! However, as with all of the Ofqual Conditions, AOs must adhere to them and as such AOs must develop ways to embed the new principles into their everyday business operations and monitor their compliance. And a gentle reminder, as the AO you are responsible and accountable, so you must ensure that the principles are also embedded across third party and Centre relationships and activities.

Ofqual have provided a lot of supporting guidance which I would strongly recommend making time to read https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ofqual-handbook/section-pr-principles. The guide includes a reminder that the principles should not be viewed in isolation, they overlap and are intended to assist AOs to comply with the Conditions of Recognition. They have also reminded AOs that there may be times when it is not possible to comply with a principle and also meet an obligation in another Condition of Recognition, for example, openness and transparency must not be at the expense of confidentiality of assessment materials.

This article provides some of my suggestions about key considerations, warning indicators, and potential mechanisms to embed and measure/monitor compliance. As you read my article, you may well be saying things like “we already do that”, and if you do that is great as the principles build-on/complement what is already in the Conditions, but have a think about whether any monitoring based adjustments may need to be made to enable your organisation to report back to Ofqual on how the principles are being applied across your business.

Principle 1 – An awarding organisation must act with honesty and integrity.

Does your organisation have clear routes for speaking up and/or whistleblowing (and are they being used)? Do staff (including contractors) receive training around behaviours and ethics? Are decisions based on the interest of learners and backed up with clear evidence-based rationale? Are your data collection mechanisms accurate and available for scrutiny across senior managers/governance groups?

Warning signs could be: (a) out of date training, or staff missing training and it not being followed up; (b) rushed IQA decisions; (c) lack of audit trails, or making recommendations without the evidence to support it, (d) production of documents retrospectively; (e) senior staff [frequently] overriding advice; (f) disproportionate results or appeals across cohorts/providers/employers;(g) inconsistent application of reasonable adjustments or special considerations; (h) repeated maladministration; (i) a lack of, or no, complaints, whistleblowing or reports of concerns from staff; (j) lack of sharing of lessons learnt where issues have been identified; (k) a focus on whether to disclose as opposed to how to disclose.

Principle 2 – An awarding organisation must treat Learners fairly by acting and taking decisions with due impartiality and based on appropriate evidence.

Have your qualification and assessment materials been through a robust design and checking process to ensure accessibility and fairness? Does your organisation have, and use, standardised templates and assessment and IQA materials with strict version control alongside clear guidance on their use and storage? Are your policies and procedures up to date? Are your conflict of interest declarations up to date and do they cover all activities, for example, can you prove that requests and investigations have been carried out by an individual without a personal interest in the outcome? Are your quality assurance processes looking out for patterns or trends and escalating and investigating any that emerge?

Warning signs could be: (a) templates that have not been used, or contain empty sections, or old versions of templates being used; (b) requests/investigation decisions [frequently] overridden by members of staff (c) dates across assessment and IQA records are out of sync, (d) missing , or out of date, conflict of interest declarations and records; (e) data outliers across decisions and/or results across learner types; (f) information not being reported through to subcommittees or the governing body.

Principle 3 – An awarding organisation must ensure that each qualification that it makes available, or proposes to make available is, and continues to be, fit for the purpose for which it is intended.

Have all your qualifications/end-point assessments got a clear audit trail detailing the design process, including that of checks and reviews prior to launch, and has the sign off process been followed? If you found challenges with the apprenticeship assessment plan during design did you report it to Ofqual under Condition EPA3.2k, and how did you resolve it to ensure the EPA remained fit for purpose? When did you last review the performance of your qualification/end point assessment, and what did you check? If you have updated your qualifications and assessments as part of ongoing review and continuous improvement, are you able to demonstrate consistency, and thus continued fairness, for learners across the versions? Have you been collecting feedback, and how have the findings fed into qualification review/updates? Is there evidence of senior management/subcommittee/governing body review of the qualification offering and its continued relevance? Who carries out horizon scanning and what happens with what they do?

Warning signs could be: (a) a loss of customers for a specific qualification; (b) disproportionate results across specific questions/tasks within your assessment banks; (c) organisational deviations from the EPA assessment plan without reporting and audit trails; (d) a lack of review, or reviews focussed on the size on questions banks as opposed to the content of the question banks; (e) lack of, or vague, change control for updates, and/or lack of communication around updates; (f) out of date qualification specification, assessor guidance or templates, and/or assessors/IQAs using old versions of templates.

Principle 4 – An awarding organisation must act in a way that maintains and, where possible, promotes public confidence in qualifications.

Have you published everything required by Ofqual in an easy to find and accessible format for customers and users (specification, complaints procedure, prior learning, fees, invoicing, arrangements for making reasonable adjustments and giving special considerations, timescales for results, and appeals process)? How do you ensure that your marketing, specifications and assessment tools and materials are error free, and how do you report investigate, and resolve any errors that are found? Are you meeting your published timescales for results? Do you have a consistent mechanism to keep customers and Centres up to date or do you reply on ‘on demand’ emails from IQAs/EQAs/customer/contract managers to keep people updated? Is your risk register up to date, does it consider reputation as a risk factor, and is there evidence of review and action? When was the last time you tested your contingency and continuity plans? Do you have a clear oversight of complaints/appeals/malpractice reports and investigation outcomes, for example, are the volumes unrealistically low or high, are they being handled consistently and how many are being upheld? Are lessons being learnt and shared across the business?

Warning signs could be (a) frequent requests for information from users for information that should be in the public domain and easily accessible; (b) complaints about fees from customers, such as ‘unknown’ add ons; (c) increased appeals, and or appeals that regularly result in decisions being overturned; (d) negative media coverage; (e) incidents occurring that should not have occurred if contracts/specifications/guidance had been followed.

Principle 5 – An awarding organisation must act in an open, transparent and co-operative manner with Ofqual and, as appropriate, with Users of qualifications.

There is a close alignment with some of the questions I have posed under principle 4, but there are also other aspects such as: Are your policies subject to a structured review process with clear details of, and justification behind, any updates made? Are your assessment materials capturing sufficient assessor feedback to provide robust rationale for the result awarded? Is your performance data easy to access (securely) and to interpret, and is it being fed through to senior managers, subcommittees and/or the governing body? Are you capturing user perceptions as part of your feedback mechanisms and using it to support continuous improvement? Is your guidance for Centres clear and consistent? Are you providing feedback to Centres and customers to help support continuous improvement [without placing confidentiality at risk]?

Warning signs could include (a) frequent requests by your organisation for extensions to data or information requests from Ofqual, and/or repeated late submissions; (b) delayed reporting of incidents to the regulator, or an approach of ‘lets fix it first and report it to Ofqual later’, (c) complaints from users about your services or decisions; (d) organisation policy changes with no explanation; (d) gaps in senior or governance meetings relating to regulatory matters.

Principle 6 – An awarding organisation must conduct its activities with a proactive approach to compliance with its conditions of recognition.

Are you regularly or systematically self-evaluating your compliance with the conditions, and using the findings to support continuous improvement and/or reporting where required? Are your staffing structures and reporting lines up to date, and have you kept Ofqual up to date with any changes to the organisation legal status or senior staff changes? If staffing has changed, how do you ensure as a business that you retained the required skills and expertise for design, delivery and award? Do your staff understand why policies and requirements exist, not just what they are?

Warning signs could include: (a) only acting on compliance related matters when Ofqual issues regulatory findings, and or panic based reaction to requests from the regulator; (b) constant firefighting, or finding that similar issues are being repeate/reoccurring; (c) out of date risk registers, policies or procedures; (d) lack of decision making audit trails; (e) out of date staff training and/or a lack of staff awareness of the organisation policies and regulatory requirements.

So, how can you monitor this in a meaningful way without adding more bureaucracy to the system?

At the start of the article, I said that you may read the detail and say that you are already doing the things I have mentioned, but are you able to contextualise it to the principes? 

Here are a few suggestions around activities to embed the principles, and establish mechanisms to monitor:

1. Staff training on the principles and what it means in their everyday work, supported by monitoring of the attendance of training and acting on non-attendance. If you use key performance indicators or have codes of conduct, perhaps check and update them to take account of the new principles.
2. IQA activities to include checks for integrity in assessment and the accurate use and application of organisation templates and guidance.
3. Embedding lessons learnt into the agendas of governance and standardisation.
4. Establishment of clear self-evaluation cycles with clear focus on areas of the business and/or themes, with the interest of the learner at the heart of the work.
5. Clear data collection schedule and tracker, with parameters and points for analysis and review. Ensuring the analysis looks for trends or outliers in the data on results, decisions and investigation outcomes, and that there are the appropriate, conflict of interest free, escalation routes if outliers or concerns are identified. Over time you will be able to establish more detailed benchmarks to identify outliers.
6. Ensure you have an easy to access and navigable website, alongside checks and sign offs for any marketing comms or material.
7. Feedback mechanisms across learners, Centres, assessors, IQAs, EQAs, and staff, and a route to report and act on feedback.

By Jacqui Molkenthin from JEML Consulting