Accreditation requirement

Introduction

Unlike some other sectors Ofqual do not accredit or endorse organisations or the processes they follow. But to be able to award regulated qualifications you do need to be recognised by us to do so.

Instead we accredit individual qualifications. Section 138 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 allows us to set an accreditation requirement for individual qualifications (or descriptions of qualifications). And if we do then any such qualification must be accredited before it is awarded.

Qualifications that must be accredited

We have decided that the following qualifications must be accredited before they are awarded:

• all A levels and AS levels
• all GCSEs
• all Technical Qualifications
• all V Levels
• all Foundation Certificates
• all Occupational Certificates

How does accreditation work?

We carry out accreditation towards the end of a qualification’s development and before the awarding organisation starts delivering it. 

Accreditation is a review of the proposed approach to a qualification. It considers in detail a qualification’s draft specification, a set of specimen assessment materials (papers and mark schemes) and the assessment strategy where an awarding organisation explains its approach. Because it is a review of a proposed approach, it considers whether this appears appropriate overall rather than confirming this for assessments in delivery. 

 We normally only require accreditation for qualifications which have detailed design rules. Accreditation allows us to check awarding organisations’ approaches are in line with those detailed rules.

We take a decision on whether we accredit a qualification using our accreditation criterion. We use the same criterion for all accreditation decisions.