Annual monitoring review FAQs

The focus of this review is to quality assure a centre’s management systems 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 during our external quality assurance or moderation reviews.

Centres will be allocated a Quality Reviewer (QR), who will conduct the AMR across all internally assessed qualifications. This means centres only need to submit generic information around management systems and administration once a year.

Following the AMR, centres will receive a report from their QR and will be given an overall risk rating of low, medium or high based on the evidence that was made available. Any actions for centres with a low or medium risk status will be checked at their next review the following session. Actions for centres with a high risk status will be reviewed during an interim review before the end of the session.

The criteria used to determine this status is outlined in our User Guide to the Annual Monitoring Review. The guide will also support centres when planning for an AMR as it outlines the criteria QRs will check as part of the AMR process, the types of evidence centres can make available to meet the criteria and how the centre risk rating is calculated.

AMRs will take place each academic session between September and July unless you are a T Level provider. AMRs for T Level providers will take place between September and February.

All centres will receive an AMR once a year and there will no longer be a requirement for External Quality Assurers (EQAs) to cover generic policies and procedures at part of our external quality assurance reviews.

Centres will receive one AMR and an external quality assurance or moderation review depending on the qualifications being delivered.

We value feedback received from our customers and use this to develop our processes, so we can strive to achieve world-class customer service. Many of our customers indicated that the process of checking generic information covered previously under ‘management systems and resources’ at every external quality assurance review was time-consuming and burdensome. Therefore, we’ve removed these generic criteria from the external quality assurance reviews to streamline our processes.

As part of our CASS strategy and compliance with Ofqual’s conditions of compliance, H2. Risk rating centres allows us to apply a risk based approach to our quality assurance activities, risk rating centres enables us to tailor our sampling plans and the training and support we can offer our centres.

DCS is not linked to the AMR, therefore the outcome of this will not affect your DCS. However, DCS may be affected in the event of non-compliance to the AMR process. This review is a mandatory requirement for every centre, every session in line with the centre agreement.

You’ll receive up to two external quality assurance reviews per QA group per session. These reviews will focus solely on assessment and internal quality assurance sampling.

Failure to upload all required evidence 48 hours prior to your review will result in your annual monitoring/external quality assurance review being cancelled and we reserve the right to charge in line with our published fees and pricing lists. Should the review be cancelled, a new date will be arranged in line with QR/EQA availability. This may result in delays to certificate claims. Find out what you need to upload in our User Guide to the Annual Monitoring Review. 

If during the review the QR/EQA identifies missing evidence, this will be requested on the day of the review. Failure to supply this on the day will result in an action on the report and you may need to pay for an additional review. This may result in delays to certificate claims.

If a planned AMR or external quality assurance review needs to be cancelled for whatever reason, it is a requirement that a minimum of 10 working days’ notice is provided.

Whilst we acknowledge that today’s work environment is a very busy one, the Programme Contact or Head of Centre would be expected to inform the EQA and our Customer Support team if they need to cancel a review by email. You can find the details for your EQA… and you also need to include [email protected]. 

If reviews are not cancelled within 10 working days, we reserve the right to charge the centre in line with our published fees and pricing lists.

Responsibility for the annual monitoring review lies with the person registered with NCFE as Head of Centre. Although the Head of Centre does not need to govern the annual monitoring review, they are responsible for ensuring the person selected to do so has a detailed knowledge of all internal management and administration processes in the centre, that contribute towards the effective delivery of NCFE qualifications.

Responsibility for the external quality assurance review lies with the person registered with NCFE as the Programme Lead for the individual sector. It is the centre’s responsibility to ensure that the correct individual is listed with us and that that individual liaises with all internal colleagues/departments offering the suite of qualifications being reviewed. If this is not managed effectively it could result in the centre being charged for an additional review should a department be missed during sampling.  

Yes, the AMR does not run-in conjunction with any external quality assurance reviews.