Your TQS application - three reasons why you should write it in-house

Over the last two years or so I’ve been asked many times to write an organisation’s TQS application. On every occasion I’ve turned down the request. I always turn down these requests because the best people to write your TQS application are already working for you.

Of course, you can ask for guidance on how to shape and frame your work, how to make sure your application makes sense to an outsider, how to check that you’ve covered the requirements and so on – and I’ve done all of these tasks several times – but writing your TQS application is a job for you, for three reasons.

It’s your TQS journey

You have made a development journey towards readiness to be certificated. You know the details of that journey. You know about your successes and the areas where you have had problems. You know what you’re really proud of.

Most of all you know how all the different pieces in your jigsaw came together.

This is the story you need to tell, and no one can tell this story better than you.

You know where the evidence is

In your TQS application you make statements about how you address the different aspects of the standard. You then use evidence of how you work in practice to help you to prove your points.

An external writer – even a great writer – won’t have this sort of information to hand. Even in you give him or her lots of material to work with, it will still be difficult for an outsider to decide which items fit the requirements of the different parts of the standard best. It takes someone who knows the standard and knows your work to do that.

You will have to work with the assessors on the verification visit

When the assessors come on site to verify, amplify and clarify what is in the application you’ll have problems, if you don’t own your application.

If you don’t know why something has been written in a particular part of the application, or why a particular example has been offered, you’re going to struggle to have a meaningful discussion with your lead assessor about it. If you don’t know how the application was constructed and the rationale behind your choice of material, you will find the verification visit difficult.

It might look like you’re removing a problem from your over-long list of things to do in your very busy day by outsourcing the writing of your TQS application, but in the long run you’ll be making more work for yourself.

Do yourself a favour

Write the application in-house, but remember to leave plenty of time to write, edit, review and rewrite. In the end the secret of good writing is all in the editing and rewriting.

So, to make sure your TQS application is really well written, don’t outsource the writing, but do make sure you write several versions of the document along the way.

If you’d like to link to this post, please do.

If you’d like to use it in your own TQS newsletter, then that’s fine, provided you acknowledge the writer and the source.

See also: TQS Application writing - the five big mistakes

The five big mistakes

Here are the five big mistakes providers make when they start to write their Training Quality Standard applications.

1. Running out of time
2. Underestimating the job
3. What, no team!
4. Writing for the wrong audience
5. Failing to follow the guidance.
   

Make one of these mistakes and it can harm your application.

Make more than one mistake and you could find you are seriously off course.

Use this post as an aide memoire for when you are writing your application. Avoid all five big mistakes if you can.

So what comes after the five big mistakes?

Now is the time to step back and think about planning the route to certification and to identify strategies that will help to you achieve success.

There are seven of them. What comes next are seven strategies to help you to make progress towards TQS certification.

Failing to follow the guidance – big mistake number five

The last of the big mistakes is one that no one needs to make.

When I am asked to review Training Quality Standard applications, I am always amazed at the number of documents sent to me which have clearly been produced without reference to the application writing guidance.

The Assessment Guide and Evidence Framework document is an excellent support to the whole TQS application writing process, as are the Part B support documents produced by the Sector Skills Councils (SSCs). Managers writing an application should use these documents to guide their work throughout the time they are writing their submissions.

However, in many cases – and probably in the majority of applications that I see – people have written what they think they should write, rather than using the published guidance to help them to be clear about what to include in their applications and what to omit.

As a result they just don’t cover the issues that need to be addressed, or they cover them badly, or they include lots of material that just isn’t relevant.

Remember, you don’t have to make this mistake.

It’s probably the easiest of the five big mistakes to avoid. . .

. . . so, make sure you follow the instructions . . . and avoid this particular problem.

Writing for the wrong audience – big mistake number four

Just who are you writing the TQS application for? Think carefully about the question because the answer will shape your whole submission.

Are you writing with the audience for your self-assessment report in mind? Are you writing for OFSTED? Are you writing for the LSC, or for another funding agency? Are you writing for nobody and no one, and just aiming to get through the job as quickly as possible?

If you write your submission primarily for any of these groups, you are writing for the wrong audience.

If you are going to write a good application, you need to think carefully about your audience. In this case, you are writing for the lead assessor, the person who will manage your TQS assessment and who will be your main contact with the assessment process.

As you write consider this person’s situation, and what he or she needs to find in your application. Put yourself in the lead assessor’s shoes, and think about what you would like to read.

You know that the lead assessor will want to gain an understanding of your organisation and what you do, so make sure this is clearly stated.

You know the lead assessor wants to undertake a scoring activity, so make sure you write clearly. Give him or her as much help as possible, by dealing with what is asked for in each section of the application.

You know the lead assessor will be visiting your site, and only has your application to help him or her to prepare, so make sure you include everything you want the assessment team to be aware of, before they arrive.

Avoid this big mistake by taking time to craft an application that is written with a clear purpose and for a defined audience. Your application will be stronger and more coherent if you follow this advice.

As a result you will understand your own organisation better, too.

Underestimating the job – big mistake number two

Writing a Training Quality Standard (TQS) application takes time, but it is also a task that needs careful planning.

The second big mistake people make when writing their application is to underestimate the size, scope and scale of the job itself and as a result plan the application writing badly.

Ask a plumber, a carpenter or a removal man about estimating and how important a task it is. Any one of these people will tell you that if you get the estimate wrong the whole job goes awry.

You don’t have the right amount of resource. You don’t have the right number of people. You don’t allocate the right amount of time to the job. The result is a mess.

It’s the same with the TQS.

Mis-estimate the job and you might decide you don’t need to write an application from scratch. You might decide you can cut and paste bits from your most recent self-assessment report or from a tender you have produced.

Mis-estimate the job and you’re also likely to think that one person can research the application and write it up, possibly over a couple of days, or maybe over a weekend.

These are big mistakes.

In fact, writing a good TQS application requires a structured approach, a commitment to gather good evidence and a willingness to spend time on building a case about how you address the specific requirements of the different parts of the Standard.

Mis-estimate the job, or if we’re being honest, underestimate the job, and you’ll be making the best you can of things without the right tools and with the wrong allocation of resource.

To avoid this big mistake accept that your TQS application is a new document. It’s a document that will take time to research and to write, and it needs a team working on it.

To avoid this big mistake, take care with your estimates.

Running out of time – big mistake number one

There’s something you can do, and do easily, that can have a catastrophic impact on your Training Quality Standard application. It’s a big mistake, possibly the biggest of all, and it’s one from which it is almost impossible to recover.

It’s the mistake of allowing yourself to run out of time.

When you begin to think about writing your application you’re probably relatively relaxed. Writing your organisation’s application might be a big task but, as you tell yourself at this stage, you have weeks in which to do the job . . . and a week is a long time.

Yet, the hours and the days and the weeks are eaten up. There are other priorities, emergencies, and all sorts of calls on your time. Before you know where you are, you are running out of time, and you still have the application to write.

Of course, when you realise what’s happening, you start writing, but by now you’ve lost a lot of the available time. In some cases you might only be a few days away from the submission deadline. For some people this realisation means they end up writing right up to the last minute.

This approach doesn’t help you to write a good application.

Get things right when you come to write your application. Start early. Create a writing schedule. Get a draft done quickly. Leave yourself time – and lots of it – to review and to rewrite.

Do all of these things and you’ll avoid big mistake number one.