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 our 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 around 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 for centres with a low or medium risk rating will be checked at their next review the following session. Actions for centres 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 will also support 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 to meet the criteria and how the centre risk rating is calculated.

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

All centres will receive an AMR once a year and there will no longer be a requirement for External Quality Assurers (EQAs) to cover generic policies and procedures as part of our external quality assurance reviews.

Centres will receive one AMR and an external quality assurance or moderation review depending on the qualifications being delivered.

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, risk rating centres enables us to tailor our sampling plans and the training and support we can offer our centres.

DCS is not linked to the AMR, therefore the outcome of this will not affect your DCS. However, DCS may be affected in the event of non-compliance with the AMR process. This review is a mandatory requirement for every centre, every session 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 QR availability. This may result in delays to certificate claims. 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 of the review. Failure to supply this on the day will result in an action in the report and you may need to pay for an additional review. This may result in delays to certificate claims.

If a planned AMR needs to be cancelled for whatever reason, 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 also need to 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 in the centre, that contribute towards the effective delivery of NCFE qualifications.

Yes, the AMR does not run-in conjunction with any external quality assurance reviews.

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 your QR has already reviewed in the previous session.

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