We have looked back on our approval and monitoring outcomes from the last academic year.
They show high engagement from education providers across all the professions and post-registration areas we regulate. Here are our key findings.
New programmes
We increased the programmes leading to registration with us by over 6 per cent. Factors driving include the take up for apprenticeship models in England and addressing workforce challenges for various professions. Aside from social work, approval was sought most in occupational therapy, physiotherapy, paramedic and independent prescribing training routes. It is pleasing to see we can support initiatives like these through flexible, but effective regulation.
Non-standard outcomes
Programmes were withdrawn or put forward for non-approval at their highest rate this year. Whilst most programmes we assess still achieve approval, this outcome reflects the challenges education providers have making new proposals in a competitive environment. We will develop our processes further to ‘front end’ significant challenges as early as possible which should benefit all stakeholders involved.
Change and its impacts
A lower number of providers used our change mechanism this year when compared to the last two. Our approach is most effective when providers understand when they should engage with us around significant change. This result may indicate we need to do some further work in this area with education providers.
Timeliness and consistency
We are generally supporting education providers well to achieve the outcomes they are seeking within our normal operating timescales. Our reports were sent within our legislative requirements this year and we also achieved greater consistency across our monitoring outcomes. We will continue to develop our processes to improve in these areas.
You can read the full report below.