Criteria

The regulators publish criteria that certain qualifications must meet before they can be accredited.

There are two types of criteria:

• Qualification criteria give broad rules on the structure, assessment and grading of particular qualifications.
• Subject criteria outline the essential knowledge, skills and understanding that should be present in all specifications irrespective of the awarding body, and give details of the assessment objectives and the scheme of assessment. These subject criteria are developed for subjects offered by more than one awarding body to ensure that there is comparability between specifications.

Awarding bodies use these criteria to develop qualification specifications. The regulators use the criteria in the accreditation process.

Criteria for each of the different qualifications can be found in the Types of qualification section of the website.