This page summarises our findings from reviewing education providers and programmes in recent years.
It provides our view on how education providers work with other quality bodies, including our regulatory requirements, and what we commonly see in programme delivery.
This information should be considered by education providers when developing new and existing programmes linked to this area.
Our threshold requirements
- programmes reflect the philosophy, core values, skills and knowledge base as articulated in any relevant curriculum guidance (SET 4.3); and
- there is compliance with the regulatory requirements of other organisations (SET 3.4).
We do not require that curriculum guidance is always delivered by education providers, which is why we use the term ‘reflect’ rather than ‘keep to’. However, we do expect education providers to have considered relevant curriculum guidance when designing their programmes, and to have made clear and explicit decisions when meeting or deviating from this guidance.
For high performing education providers, we expect to see that education providers respond to the requirements and / or expectations of others, to inform our view on their quality mechanisms.
Summary reflections
Education providers are aware of and usually align with the expectations of professional bodies and other relevant organisations. We welcome consideration and alignment with these expectations, as it shows that education providers are considering professional norms in developing and delivering programmes. Education providers regularly engage with professional bodies. They have processes in place to identify and make updates to their programmes to reflect any relevant changes to professional body guidance.
When there are bodies that have regulatory or commissioning requirements of education providers, those requirements are central to programme design and development. For example, we frequently saw alignment for apprenticeship programmes, and programmes centrally commissioned in Wales.
Sometimes, alignment with the requirements or expectations of others is considered by education providers as meeting our standards in and of itself. However, we need to explore these areas with education providers, to make a judgement that our standards are met or maintained with these approaches.
Professional bodies for smaller professions, or without a strong education accreditation function sometimes were overlooked by education providers when developing their programmes. This misses opportunities, either with education providers considering the work of the whole range of professional bodies, or in defining to HCPC how they keep abreast of developments in professions. The former may limit the ability of education providers keeping their provision up to date, the latter may negatively impact on our view of risk for the education provider.
Education provider approaches
When proposing new programmes:
- Most education providers aimed to align with professional body expectations, and many programmes were also assessed by professional bodies alongside HCPC assessments. In these cases, education providers often explicitly mapped to the guidance of these bodies.
- Education providers also considered other frameworks, such as Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) professional standards and Ofsted requirements (for apprenticeship programmes), or the requirements of commissioning organisations (such as Health Education and Improvement Wales)
Sometimes, where professional body expectations and regulatory requirements link, education providers used meeting professional body expectations as evidence they meet HCPC standards. This is based on the misconception that HCPC standards are ‘minimum’ standards and professional body standards go beyond these. Where professional bodies may expect specific inputs, such as staff to learner ratios and specific durations of practice-based learning, we need to consider whether education provider approaches are appropriate in the situation. This means that education providers need to have considered why their staff to learner ratio, or duration of practice-based learning (as examples) are appropriate in the situation, rather showing they have complied with specific metrics. In these situations, we worked with education providers to understand our requirements, and they were able to reason through their approaches to demonstrate how they met our standards.
When monitoring and developing programmes, education providers delivering a large number of HCPC professions tend to focus on professional bodies for larger professional programmes. This shows that larger education providers may be missing some of the professional bodies for the professions they deliver, either in internal considerations or when engaging with us.
Some professional bodies do not accredit or endorse education programmes, and as formal professional body oversight is not mandatory, not all education providers seek this form of engagement. In these circumstances, education providers often undertake alternative forms of engagement, or example collaboration on key topics such as updates to practice handbooks, enhancing assessments in practice-based learning, or to follow guidance produced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Current sector focus and challenges
Education providers consider changes in relevant professional body guidance to make updates to their curricula and / or other areas of their programmes. However, education providers do feel that considering and adopting regular and varying changes in guidance and standards required by multiple professional bodies and regulators challenging to manage.
To support education providers, we are undertaking work with professional bodies and other regulators to consider where we can reduce regulatory overlap and burden. Where we have underpinning arrangements to do so, we work directly with professional bodies and others to inform our assessments, and our profession-specific partners understand the requirements of these bodies.