Qualification Achievement Rates (QARs) are increasingly being monitored for SPI colleges and are used to mirror the quality of the courses run by providers. The use of QARs is important to the self-analysis of your provision as well as informing auditing processes. QARs are also used to inform and be compared with national picture of course quality.
Who is it for?
This training is for staff with responsibility to observe, manage and inform on the status and quality of their college’s provision including quality managers, curriculum managers, those with MIS responsibilities and any staff with responsibility for the self-assessment process.
Training content
The aim of the training is to empower providers to reflect and monitor their own data and to critically compare against other similar providers. It will support you to identify how QARs affect your organisation and how to access your own data tables. The training will help with understanding ways to manipulate the QAR data, identify where issues may arise and how QAR outcomes can be used in quality reporting.
The session will be a blend of presentation and practical activities. The focus of the presentation will be on:
- what are qualification rates and what are they used for?
- how should they be used in self-assessments: overall, timely and hybrid end years?
- calculating QARs
- exclusions
- example calculations
- minimum thresholds.
Practical activities will cover:
- identifying own QARs immediately
- identifying graph elements
- manipulating downloads.
Upcoming training
Understanding and analysing Qualification Achievement Rates
Thursday 3 July 2025, 10:00am–12:00pmA new training on identifying how QARs affect your organisation and how to access your own data tables.
Understanding and analysing Qualification Achievement Rates
Tuesday 4 November 2025, 10:00am–12:00pmA new training on identifying how QARs affect your organisation and how to access your own data tables.
In-house training
This course is available to be delivered as an in-house training, online or in-person, to be delivered to a group. You can request in-house training through our expression of interest form.
You might also be interested in
If you have completed this course, or have decided that it might not be right for you, we also offer training for those new to completing ILR returns, as well as those experienced with the process but looking to learn more about it.
The Natspec Funding & Compliance consultancy offer for specialist colleges provides a detailed review of ILR returns.