Employer Engagement

What effect will the changes in Quality in Careers Standard Awards have?

Monday 20th March 2017

Recently the Quality in Careers Standard issued a number of new announcements to the way the quality awards are changing and I've seen a few posts on Facebook and Twitter wondering how this will affect the award their school has or is working towards.

I've been party to the changes as I sit on the QICS standard board as the representative of the CDI careers educator sector., so I thought I'd pen a few lines answering a few basic questions. If you'd like to ask a question I've not thought of please feel free to add the question to the comments.

1) Does this mean our quality award is no longer valid?

No - your award will remain valid until it's renewal date where you will be able to renew is as the National CEIAG quality award.

2) We're part way through an award, does this mean we need to start again?

No - you can continue with your award and you will be awarded the National CEIAG quality award awarded by your chosen licence award holder.

3) We've already paid for an award does this mean we've lost our money?

No - talk to your chosen licence holder - they will be able to reassure you.

4) Why did they make these changes?

Because they way the awards were organised was seen as confusing by many. We had a number of different awards which essentially were the same but had some minor differences but people found it hard to understand. By reorganising as a single award delivered by different licence holders people will know that the award is the same standard and quality but still have choice of which licence holder to choose. There are 11 full licence holders, some of whom deliver nationally and others locally, full details of licensees can be found on the Quality in Careers Standard website here

5) Is there an easy way to explain the changes to SLT?

It's rather like GCSEs Think of QICS as Ofqual and each of the licence holders as an exam board such as Edexcel or OCR.

Hope this helps... don't forget to add any further questions as comments and I'll pick them up as quickly as I can