Provision of Education Quality Assurance Services

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as the Contracting Authority wishes to establish a potential contract with a third-party delivery partner to undertake Quality Assurance of educational institutions across the UK on their behalf to ensure protection of the public.

Quality Assurance (QA) of education is one of the key regulatory activities of the NMC. It gives us the confidence that education institutions are meeting our standards for education and training. This helps us to know that students who have successfully completed an approved programme are meeting the standards of proficiency that we require before they join our register and deliver safe, kind and effective care - it's one of the ways we fulfil our duty to protect the public. If QA identifies that an education institution isn't meeting our standards, we must take action so the education institution returns to compliance. This will ensure that there is public confidence in our role in nursing, midwifery and nursing associate education and encourages the education institution to remain responsible for meeting our standards.

The responsibilities of the NMC for education and training are set out in the Nursing and Midwifery Order (The Nursing and Midwifery Order, Part IV Education and Training, 2001). The NMC has a responsibility to ensure that education institutions providing education and training of nurses, midwives and nursing associates meet our requirements and standards.

The role of the Quality Assurance Service Partner (QASP) will be directed towards monitoring activities, including coordinating and facilitating monitoring visits, extraordinary reviews and listening events, along with supporting annual monitoring, undertaking thematic analysis and identifying trends in intelligence and making recommendations to support our QA decision-making. This shift of focus provides an opportunity to review our education QA requirements, as we look to procure a QASP best able to support us to fulfil our regulatory function, offering agility and innovative solutions to implementing the QA framework, ensuring that our EDI Strategy and plan remains at the forefront of the work we do, as move to indefinite approval and focus on robust risk-based monitoring.