External Quality Assurance

External Quality Assurance (EQA) is conducted in most cases by OCN London Centre EQAs for the approved centres to which they are appointed, in liaison with each centre’s Quality Assurance Contact (QAC). Sometimes it will be undertaken by a specialist EQA for a sector or a cluster of courses if this has been agreed with the EQA or where it is a requirement of a particular qualification. EQAs will scrutinise the evidence for all units offered by the centre in the sectors, clusters or qualifications for which they are responsible. They will:

Sample assessment and learner evidence of achievement
Ensure that rigorous processes are in place for the assessment, internal quality assurance (IQA), tracking and recording of individual learner achievements and learner evaluations, in accordance with OCN London requirements
Sanction the certification process via the ERAC system
Provide a written QE report which will be sent to the centre

The centre’s quality assurance contact will request an EQA engagement and this may be either a remote sampling or centre visit. It is recommended that the EQA engagement is booked as soon as possible (particularly if this is anticipated at the end of the academic year) and for centre visits 6 weeks’ notice is required. Prior to the engagement the relevant completed Electronic Recommendation for Award of Credit (ERAC) form(s), indicating unit achievement for each learner, must be completed (these must be uploaded before the day of the external moderation/verification engagement). By uploading the ERAC, the centre Quality Contact has taken responsibility for checking the accuracy of the results presented.

If you have not received a copy of the ERAC for each cohort of learners you have registered or there are problems with the ERAC you have been sent, it is extremely important that you notify your Business Support contact at OCN London before the EQA engagement takes place. Unless the ERAC is uploaded in advance of the engagement, the external quality assurance cannot take place.

The EQA must be able to select random samples from ALL of the units from all of the learners for which credit is claimed.

Centres are encouraged to submit learner portfolio evidence electronically. To facilitate this, centres can upload evidence and related documentation to QuartzWeb against specific course runs to which they relate. To upload materials to a particular course (for example when sharing samples of learners’ work) click My Course Runs from the QuartzWeb home page.

Please visit our QuartzWeb user guide area for further information about the process of uploading evidence.

For agreed centre visits where there are logistical difficulties, for example if there are a lot of portfolios and/or they have to be transported between locations, it may be possible for the EQA to agree a set sample before the visit. However, even where this is the case, it is important to ensure portfolios could still be accessed, if necessary, at a later date and until the relevant ERAC has been confirmed for certification by the EQA.

Although not encouraged, if paper portfolios need to be sent to OCN London for EQA, these must be sent by postal recorded delivery, delivered by hand or courier. Copies of all work despatched to the EQA should be kept, as if work is lost in transit the centre must be able to provide this evidence by some other means. Although OCN London would be sympathetic about any work lost in transit, it cannot guarantee to award learners on this basis alone.

Portfolio evidence needs to be presented in a way that makes it straightforward to locate evidence of units and individual assessment criteria within each unit. There should typically be one portfolio for each learner, with their name clearly displayed and a signed learner authenticity statement. Where learners have completed multiple units, these should be in a consistent sequential order within each portfolio and the portfolio should have a contents page where a significant number of units are involved. Electronic evidence must have consistent naming of the documents with the learners’ full names as they appear on the ERAC and a system which allows for the location of evidence against unit assessment criteria.

Assessment evidence should have the full unit name and code clearly displayed. For each unit it should also indicate where evidence of individual criteria is located; this is sometimes done with a unit front sheet and page numbers, but there are alternatives including annotating the evidence itself with the criteria numbers. The evidence should also be signed and dated by the assessor to confirm that assessment is completed. For electronic evidence there must be a clear distinction between the learners’ work and assessor comments (different colour ink or font can be used) and assessment records must be provided with each learner’s submission.

Assessment tasks or briefs need to be available for all units, showing exactly what learners were asked to do. Where these are long and/or complex, it is helpful to link the different parts to the assessment criteria they relate to.

Ideally, class handouts and other content that does not relate to assessment should be removed from portfolios. If this is impractical, it should be easy to distinguish between these and the actual evidence learners have produced.

Copies of each unit being put forward for sampling, including learning outcomes, assessment criteria and prescribed and optional assessment methods.

This should be the official OCN London unit document rather than something you produced based on this, as the EQA needs to make sure that the internal documents you are using are accurate. In addition, if you are delivering any qualification units, you must have a full copy of the relevant qualification guide available, should the EQA request this.

The relevant internal quality assurance (IQA) records.

Records should include:

Pre-assessment internal quality assurance (IQA) of assessment tasks
A sample plan showing evidence that the internal quality assurance (IQA) process has been planned
A record of the sampling activity (i.e. sampling processes used/how sample was chosen)
Records for each portfolio sampled and any observations made, recorded on an appropriate OCN London IQA template or one of the centre’s own devising (but not the template of another awarding body)
A feedback report to the Assessor for each cohort of learners that has been sampled
Records of any standardisation meetings held

The IQA should be available for the duration of quality engagement, unless it has been agreed with the EQA in advance that this will not be required.

Learner evaluations of the course(s) they have undertaken.

These could be the original feedback sheets or a summary prepared by tutors.