City And Guilds Accreditation For Polestar

Edited by the Printingtalk editorial team Jun 8, 2004

The Polestar Group has been accredited as a registered approved centre for City Guilds qualifications, including NVQs.

The Polestar Group has been accredited as a registered approved centre for City Guilds qualifications, including NVQs.

Centre and scheme approval, which were applied for simultaneously, is obtained by organisations that wish to become an assessment centres and to offer City Guilds qualifications to employees for the first time.

Polestar said it is expecting to register in the region of 500 employees for NVQs.

With Polestar's structure, the accreditation allows the group to combine its resources to provide assessment across different locations, whilst retaining its head office training department as the Centre.

Catherine Hearn, Polestar human resources director, said: "With our teams around the sites, we are well placed to develop our NVQ training and qualification programme." As part of the approval procedure, Polestar was visited by two external verifiers, one to award centre and scheme approval for print NVQ and technical certificates whilst the other considered scheme approval for delivering assessors and internal verifiers.

The group will continue to be subject to external verification, with verifiers providing information, advice and support, whilst ensuring it is complying with approval criteria.

In addition, Polestar appoints its own quality assurance co-ordinators (QACs), internal verifiers, assessors and invigilators.

Training manager Darrin Stevens and training administrator Hannah Ceely will both become QACs, whilst employees will be appointed to the other roles at individual sites.

The QAC is responsible for ensuring that the management, administrative and quality assurance systems for all City Guilds qualifications are properly maintained, as well as co-ordinating the work of the internal verifiers.

In turn, the internal verifiers monitor the work of all assessors to ensure they are applying the standards and syllabus consistently throughout assessment activities.

The primary role of the assessor is to assess candidates' performance and related knowledge in a range of tasks and to ensure that the competence and knowledge demonstrated meets the requirements of the standards and syllabus.