Three Questions – The Experience of Assessment

Wakefield College has recently gained TQS certification for Part A and for Part B (Logistics).

Services to Business, the business arm of Wakefield, led the college towards its TQS success and managed the college’s TQS development journey.

Every one at Wakefield College is absolutely delighted with the achievement.

As the college’s literature says: “We are proud of being acknowledged as one of the top training providers in the UK, having received the Training Quality Standard.”

I spoke to Janet Hilton, Services to Business Market Development Manager at Wakefield College recently, about the college’s experience of assessment. Janet offered lots of good advice and useful insights into the TQS assessment process.

How long did it take you to produce your application?
“From start to finish it took us about six months.

We had the systems there but not in the way the submission required. This gave us the opportunity to review how we presented our statistics to make them more sector specific. We have now altered our processes not only with Logistics but we have extended this to other areas as well.

We involved the whole college and that takes time. The exec. team, the QA team, our own staff within Services to Business including sub-contractors and the apprenticeship team – they were all involved.

We didn’t leave it at that. We involved the stakeholders, too – employers, Skills for Logistics, schools, European connection to name but a few.

As a result every one had ownership of our submission.

We found that Part A and Part B are different. Writing the two parts was different. With Part A we concentrated on the whole college. Part B was a lot more specialised.

We were very confident as we were writing because we know we are an excellent training provider and everything we said we could prove. We, however, knew we had to find the right way to tell the assessors about what we do.”

What was the verification visit like?
“Thorough.

It was rigorous. It was probing. The assessors knew what they were looking for.

They were friendly and pleasant, but they were clear about what they wanted.

The assessment process was a challenge yet the experience was very positive. We pulled everything together to make sure we were ready – and we were. They wanted to speak to different people – our executive team, human resources, the CPD unit, sub-contractors and staff – we made sure everyone was available.

We had prepared lots of examples of evidence from across the whole college ready for the visit. We could pull them out easily. That meant we were well prepared for the visit.”

What hints and tips would you like to offer to organisations preparing for assessment?
“Make sure that whatever you write about in your application you are able to evidence.

Sell yourself, and your organisation, but make sure you can evidence what you say. That’s really important. Don’t take anything you do as obvious – tell them about it.

Remember also that it’s your story and nobody else’s. Be clear about that.

Have a team of people make an input to the application. Staff, stakeholders, every one. Get their input. Get them to contribute. Their inputs are so valuable. Keep going back through your application and be willing to alter what you have put to make it flow more easily, Don’t just do this at the end. Brianstorm ideas as people from different areas will look at the submission wearing a different hat from yourself – don’t miss the opportunity to listen, and include what they have to say.

We kept asking ourselves if we were selling what we do strongly enough. We kept asking if we had enough statistics to support what we were saying and, with Part B, if we were meeting the requirements of Skills for Logistics.

We checked amongst ourselves. We checked with other people, too, and asked them to read what we were writing, because it’s very useful to have lots of people look at the application.

In the end the application was a credit to all our staff.”

Find out more about Wakefield College’s work with employers by visiting their website.