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Accreditation Coordination Group

The Accreditation Coordination Group (ACG) is made up of six core members of staff from SQA Accreditation:

  1. Head of Accreditation 
  2. Senior Accreditation Manager
  3. Senior Regulation Manager
  4. Research Officer
  5. Accreditation Officer
  6. Information Officer

Of these, at least one of the first three must be in attendance for decisions to be confirmed and ratified.

Meeting weekly, each ACG is completed by representatives of the Accreditation and Regulation staff. On a rota basis, one Accreditation Manager and one Regulation Manager or Regulation Officer will attend each meeting.

The primary role of ACG is to make group decisions in relation to awarding bodies and the qualifications they offer. This includes:

  1. Awarding body approval
  2. Awarding body quality assurance issues including audit outcomes, audit reports and recommendations
  3. New qualifications
  4. Amendments, extensions and withdrawals of existing accredited qualifications
  5. Centre monitoring reports, their outcomes, recommendations & impact on awarding body quality assurance measures

To enable decisions, papers on these submissions are prepared by Regulation Managers (1 &2), Accreditation Managers (3 & 4) and Regulation Officers (5) and presented to ACG.

ACG also approves qualification-related submissions from Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) and Standards Setting Bodies (SSBs), including qualification structures and SCQF Credit Rating. SQA Accreditation is the Credit Rating Body for SVQs. The approval process for SCQF Credit Rating is mandatory for SVQs and can be adopted for other accredited qualifications.

Papers on these submissions are presented to ACG by Accreditation Managers. Whether awarding body, SSC or SSB, each submitting organisation will liaise with a designated Manager before a submission is presented to ACG.

The schedule of meetings for the year, including deadline dates for submissions by awarding bodies can be found at Committee Meeting Dates.

ACG considers various types of submission, but each will result in one of three decisions - Approved, Approved with Conditions or Deferred. For more information on these decisions go to the ACG Decisions page.