We have achieved it again
We have achieved it again, let me explain a little more. We have Direct Claim Status and that probably doesn’t mean a lot to most people and certainly, our learners don’t have a clue what it means either because we have asked them.
After they book their course with us, they arrive and register and spend the day or days with a healthcare professional learning first aid, they will have practical parts of the course they need to pass 100% as well as a multi-choice question paper at the end where they must achieve at least 80% pass mark. Most of them achieve higher than that because of how we teach our learners.
Each course we deliver means paperwork for us so we can record what was taught that day along with who attended and recording of their achievement. Our learners also complete their multi-choice question paper, this is marked by another staff member using a marking guide given to us by the awarding organisation. In our case, that is Qualifications Network UK.
This paperwork goes to our IQA (Internal Quality Assurance), ours happen to be an external company and not a team member so we get an unbiased assessment of the paperwork and it is recorded. Our IQA does dip samples at random where they will ask for the paperwork from a recent course so they can audit our paperwork.
Our IQA does site visits at random to check various areas of delivery such as trainer CPD (Continuing Professional Development), trainer teaching assessment, trainers qualifications are up to date.
To deliver regulated first aid qualifications we must have certain auditing processes in place to meet the legal and training requirements of our awarding organisation to become an approved centre to deliver accredited and regulated first aid qualifications.
We get audited by our Awarding Organisations EQA (External Quality Assurance) dept, they can ask at any time to submit the paperwork of a recent course for audit purposes. Our IQA does regular audits and assessments and they upload those to our Awarding Organisation Portal for their scrutiny.
With our internal and external audits in place and proving to our Awarding Organisation that we run a tight ship, we get awarded ‘Direct Claim Status’ (DCS) for a set amount of months before we get audited and reviewed again. This is known as the gold standard achievement which tells us that we have everything in place and at this moment in time they are happy with us as an approved centre.
In that set period we may get asked for a dip sample (course paperwork) to be submitted so they can check the paperwork, we have a small window to submit the paperwork. We scan in all paperwork so we can immediately submit it on request.
When the audit time comes around again we have to submit any paperwork they require and we are always very pleased when we know ‘We have achieved it again’, and the Awarding Organisation sets out how long we have this status before the external audit comes again.
Warwickshire First Aid Training runs a selection of workplace first aid training both on the customer’s site and also from our two training centres in Warwickshire.
