Qualification and system verification

Covid19 Arrangements

Due to the Covid19 contingency SQA have made the following changes to the Evidence Retention Schedule Requirements (146 KB) during this period.

• Scotland’s Colleges
  • will be required to retain candidate assessment judgement evidence until 31 December 2020, where there has been a holistic approach has been taken.
  • all regulated qualification candidate evidence should be retained for 6 months following the resulting date of the candidate.
• Non-College sector
  • All qualification evidence should be retained for 6 months following the resulting date of the candidate.

Qualification and system verification explained

SQA ensures the integrity of certification by providing support and conducting verification to ensure centres can meet our quality assurance criteria.

As an SQA approved centre you must show that you continue to meet SQA’s Quality Assurance Criteria as you deliver and assess your qualification(s). We routinely monitor all of our approved centres to ensure that they continue to have the necessary management and quality assurance systems, and that they meet the assessment and internal verification requirements for the qualifications being offered. This is known as verification.

Where a centre has not submitted any candidate entries for more than 12 months, this will impact on SQA’s requirement to undertake both our Systems and Qualification Verification activity. Where this occurs, SQA reserves the right to withdraw that centre’s approval. For more information, please refer to your SQA Operating Agreement that was completed during the approval process as this details what is required of an SQA approved centre.

There are two processes to meet SQA’s verification criteria:

• Qualification Verification - how we ensure centres are assessing their candidates in line with national standards, and that assessment decisions comply with SQA’s quality assurance criteria. 
• Systems Verification – how we ensure centres are managing their systems and resources to meet SQA’s criteria.

Support for you

• Document library
• Prior verification
• Internal Verification Toolkit
• Development visits

Contact

If you have questions please contact 0345 213 5928 or operationshnvq@sqa.org.uk