Recently, Ofqual consulted with Awarding Organisations and other users of qualifications with a view to amend the Conditions, requirements, guidance and criteria which would apply to all qualifications – general and vocational.
Gateway Qualifications, along with other Awarding Organisations, responded to the consultation and Ofqual have now taken on board those responses and set out the new approach.
None of the changes should have any effect on Centres delivering qualifications or units from Gateway Qualifications, the vast majority of changes will only impact behind the scenes in the way we develop and review qualifications.
The one visible change is that Ofqual is ending the framework on which the vast majority of our qualifications sit, the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) – you may be familiar with the initials QCF whcih appear in all our qualification titles.
Ofqual is also ending the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) which is home to qualifications such as GCSEs and A Levels.
These two frameworks will be replaced by a single Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) which will house all qualifications regulated by Ofqual, regardless of the type.
Ofqual hopes that the RQF will help people understand better how qualifications relate to each other, by setting consistent measures of size (how long, typically, a qualification takes to study and be assessed for) and level of difficulty.
In practice, nothing should change for Gateway Qualifcations Centres or learners. We will continue to develop flexible, unitised qualifications at a variety of sizes and levels to meet the needs of our Centres and their learners. The only visible difference will be that we gradually remove the (QCF) descriptor from our qualifications ahead of Ofqual’s 2017 deadline, this is a purely cosmetic change reflecting the move of the qualifications onto the RQF and does not affect how you deliver or claim for qualifications.
If you do have any concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us or take at look at our What is TQT? article.