Enhanced quality assurance arrangements

Unannounced activity is an enhanced quality assurance arrangement for ensuring that conditions of assessment are being adhered to and that qualification assessment standards are being met and maintained. This provides SQA, centres and learners with assurance that these qualifications are being delivered in line with qualification and regulatory requirements. 

Centres offering these qualifications are responsible for the administration and conduct of assessments and that rules regarding the conduct of assessments are applied consistently and fairly.

Centres delivering assessments for these qualifications must advise SQA a minimum of 5 working days prior to the assessment taking place by completing a notification of assessment form, as per below:

For Street Works and Taxi qualifications, please use the form below:

Notification of Taxi & Street Works Assessments form

For Health and Safety in a Construction Environment and all First Aid qualifications, please use the form below:

Notification of First Aid & Health and Safety in a Construction Environment Assessments form

It is essential that you include the specific time that the assessment is taking place. Assessments can only take place if SQA has been notified. Failure to notify us could result in sanctions being imposed on your centre. Not every assessment you notify us of will incur an announced activity and will be selected at random. 

If you need to cancel a notification of assessment as the assessment is no longer taking place at the scheduled time, please use the cancellation form below:

Cancellation of qualification assessment notification form

Full details of requirements can be found in the ‘Appendix: Guidance on managing assessment conditions’ within the following document Qualification Verification Criteria Guidance for Centres (462 KB).

Please also see the following guidance for further information on the unannounced process including what to expect on the day.

Unannounced activity guidance for centres (95 KB)

Indirect claim status will be applied to centres coming forward for approval for any of the above qualifications, either as a first time SQA centre, or at an existing SQA approved centre.

In practice, this means that prior to certificating candidates a successful qualification verification activity has to take place. The benefit of this approach is that it ensures you are delivering assessments in line with the qualification requirements and that you can seamlessly certificate candidates.

We will initiate qualification verification activity as soon as your centre becomes approved to deliver one of the above qualifications. You may not have enough candidate evidence at this time, so we will keep in touch with you each month to ensure that verification is undertaken as soon as possible.