We would like to thank everyone who visited our exhibition stand at the FAB conference. During the conference, we ran a survey asking attendees from Awarding Organisations (AOs) about the challenges they faced with QCF qualification development right now, and we especially thank the 36 people who took the time to participate in our survey. We’ve analysed the results, and will publish a short report early in the new year, but we can share some of the highlights now.

1. The most pressing policy issue identified by respondents was funding of qualifications. With increased competition between AOs and a recent change of Government, a lot of people expressed concern over their market position and the impact of changes to the existing funding regimes.
2. In terms of QCF-specific challenges, respondents raised two main problems: first, dealing with equivalence across qualifications, and second writing higher-level units (that is to say, units at level 4 or above).
3. Lastly, a large proportion of participants identified IT process and system challenges: either internal IT systems to support their accreditation process, or interfacing with the IT systems of other organisations. Indeed, improving internal IT systems was ranked mostly highly as an area in which there is scope for improving technical skills.

We look forward to publishing our full findings early next year; if you’d like a copy of the report sent directly to you then please let us know, or of course subscribe to our website’s RSS feed or follow us on twitter to get notified of updates!