The new skills bill should make it a legal requirement for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to be regulated by Ofqual, says the Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB).
In a paper published by the FAB ahead of the second committee day of the Post-16 Education and Skills Bill in the House of Lords, the federation says the bill needs to be updated to ensure that the institute is publicly accountable for the reliability, validity and quality of the product set it “delivers into the marketplace”.
The report says: “Making this the new mission of Ofqual, with statutory underpinning in the skills bill, would set up a single qualifications and regulatory playing field for all non-degree qualifications and apprenticeships in England.
“To avoid accusations that the institute was marking its own homework, Ofqual would subject those aspects of the institute’s functions that are similar in nature to an awarding organisation to the exact same system of regulation, via the general conditions of recognition. “
At the moment, it is proposed that the institute approves qualification content and the regulation of its delivery and award is overseen by Ofqual.
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Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said the bill was insufficient, because it “does not clearly define the roles of Ofqual and the institute in law to ensure a single regulatory framework where all qualifications are regulated and treated in exactly the same way.”
Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education ‘should be regulated by Ofqual’
He added: “With the decision to continue with Ofqual as a regulator of qualifications in England; and the new powers in the bill granted to the institute to approve technical qualifications in future, we need to ensure that both these public bodies have the necessary statutory underpinning to carry out their roles effectively.
“This paper makes practical proposals for how the legislation can be much improved. Crucially, it will ensure a fair and balanced regulatory system for technical qualifications where no public body is able to get way with marking their own homework. It will also result in less complexity and cost for the taxpayer at a time when we should be simplifying the skills system.”
The paper calls for several changes in the bill. It says content and parameters for the qualifications should be set in line with government policy with the benefit of employer input, and then Ofqual, as an independent body, should ensure that qualifications are delivered by the awarding organisations that it regulates.
It also says the extension to the T-level categories that will be subject to the institute’s approval should be set out in regulations by the secretary of state, rather than simply determined by theiInstitute, and that amendments should be made to Ofqual’s powers and duties to be clear where its functions have primacy and/or where it must consult the institute and where it will give way to the institute’s decisions.
It says: “Clause 10 of the skills bill goes some way to delineating between the functions of the two bodies but otherwise leaves it to ‘cooperation’ between the two bodies, which gives no certainty to the bodies subject to their respective and overlapping jurisdictions.”
And it adds: “The system’s coherence must be clear on the face of primary legislation and not left to the bodies to work out between themselves on a generalised or ad hoc basis.”
