Focus Awards accredits qualifications on behalf of Ofqual (The Office for Qualifications and Examination Regulation), the UK government’s qualification regulator for qualifications (other than degrees) in England.
As a Regulated Awarding Organisation (AO), sometimes referred to as an Awarding Body, Focus Awards develops nationally recognised qualifications for distribution through approved training providers to the general public. Those qualifications are listed on a National framework known as the Regulated Qualification Framework, or RQF, and displayed on the government’s website (https://www.gov.uk/find-a-regulated-qualification). You can also search for a specific qualification at that link.
The training providers authorised to deliver those qualifications are regulated by Focus Awards through a stringent quality assurance process that licences such training providers as Focus Awards Approved Centres.
The quality assurance process ensures that Focus Awards’ Approved Centres have met, and continue to meet, the standards mandated by Ofqual. In so doing, Focus Awards protects the public by laying down specific criteria with which the training provider must comply. This reassures the recipients that the training is safe and properly delivered, and in turn assures the Regulator of their validity and fitness for purpose when delivered to the Centre’s clients and customers.
This ongoing validity and fitness for purpose is audited at least annually by independent External Quality Assurers directly contracted for the purpose.
Focus Awards is also able to design and develop bespoke or specialist qualifications for its Centres in subject areas for which there may not be provision or sufficient demand for a regulated qualification. As an Awarding Organisation, Focus Awards has the necessary expertise and regulatory power to quality assure such qualifications