Annual monitoring review FAQs

The focus of this review is to quality assure a centre’s management systems and administration to ensure they remain compliant with our approval criteria. No learners will be sampled as part of this review, as this will be covered during your external quality assurance or moderation reviews.

Centres will be allocated a Quality Reviewer (QR), who will conduct the AMR across all internally assessed qualifications. This means centres only need to submit generic information about management systems and administration once a year.

Following the AMR, centres will receive a report from their QR and will be given an overall risk rating of low, medium or high based on the evidence that was made available. Any actions with a low or medium risk rating will be checked at your next review the following session. Actions with a high-risk rating will be reviewed during an interim review before the end of the session. 

The criteria used to determine this status is outlined in our User Guide to the Annual Monitoring Review. The guide also supports centres when planning for an AMR as it outlines the criteria QRs will check as part of the AMR process, the types of evidence centres can make available and how the centre risk rating is calculated.

AMRs will take place each academic year between August and July unless you are a T Level provider. AMRs for T Level providers will take place between September and February.

As part of our CASS strategy and compliance with Ofqual’s conditions of compliance, H2, risk rating centres allows us to apply a risk-based approach to our quality assurance activities, enabling us to tailor our sampling plans and the training and support we can offer centres.

DCS is not linked to the AMR, therefore the outcome of this will not impact your DCS. However, DCS may be affected in the event of non-compliance with the AMR process. This review is a mandatory requirement for all centres every year in line with our centre agreement. 

Failure to upload all required evidence 48 hours prior to your review will result in your AMR being cancelled and we reserve the right to charge in line with our published fees and pricing lists. Should the review be cancelled, a new date will be arranged in line with your QR’s availability. Find out what you need to upload in our User Guide to the Annual Monitoring Review. 

If the QR identifies missing evidence during the review, this will be requested on the day. Failure to supply this will result in an action in the report and you may need to pay for an additional review.  

If a planned AMR needs to be cancelled, it is a requirement that a minimum of 10 working days’ notice is provided. 

Whilst we acknowledge that today’s work environment is a very busy one, the Programme Contact or Head of Centre would be expected to inform the QR and our External Quality Assurance team if they need to cancel a review by email. You can find the contact details for your QR on the Portal, and you should also copy in [email protected].  

If reviews are not cancelled within 10 working days, we reserve the right to charge the centre in line with our published fees and pricing lists.

Responsibility for the AMR lies with the person registered with NCFE as Head of Centre. Although the Head of Centre does not need to govern the AMR, they are responsible for ensuring the person selected to do so has a detailed knowledge of all internal management and administration processes at the centre, that contribute towards the effective delivery of NCFE qualifications.

If you’ve had an AMR in the previous session, your QR will send a link to complete an AMR self-assessment form before the review. This asks if you’ve made any changes to your policies and procedures. If no changes have been made, you do not need to re-upload documents as your QR has already reviewed these in the previous session.

This page contains relevant documents and a breakdown of the AMR report.