We are committed to regulating in accordance with regulatory best practice, particularly the Better Regulation Executive's five principles of good regulation³ and the Macrory report Regulatory Justice: Making Sanctions Effective (November 2006)⁴.

In line with these principles, we target our regulatory activities in accordance with our assessment of risks to learners, standards, efficiency and public confidence, while having regard, among other matters set out in the Act, to the number of regulated qualifications available and the desirability of facilitating innovation. All of our decisions are informed by the evidence available to us.

Our approach to regulating awarding organisations is based on the premise that awarding organisations are themselves accountable for the quality and standards of their regulated qualifications.

We will take action that is proportionate to the degree of risk associated with the nature or behaviour of a specific awarding organisation or class of awarding organisation, the type of regulated qualification in question, the number and type of affected or potentially affected learners and other users of qualifications, and the impact (or potential impact) on standards, public confidence in regulated qualifications, or the efficiency with which such qualifications are provided.

When things go wrong, and an awarding organisation is or is likely to be in breach of its conditions of recognition, we will use the range of our powers to take action to (as appropriate):

• secure that the awarding organisation brings itself back into compliance with the conditions, and take further action if it does not;
• prevent the awarding organisation gaining from the breach;
• seek to deter all awarding organisations from future breaches of conditions; and
• promote public confidence in qualifications, through visible, appropriate and effective regulatory action.

We will act consistently. This means that we will treat like cases alike, but will also make distinctions between cases where there are relevant differences of fact which mean that we should treat them in different ways. When we make decisions, we will consider all the circumstances of the case in the light of the evidence available to us.

For example, where it appears to us that an awarding organisation has failed or is likely to fail to comply with its conditions of recognition, we will take into account all the facts relevant to that awarding organisation, including its past compliance history (including whether or not the non-compliant behaviour is a one-off or part of a pattern), whether the awarding organisation has identified the issue itself and taken steps to address it, the awarding organisation‟s acceptance of responsibility, its co-operation with our investigations, and whether it acted in good faith.

We will be transparent in our approach. We will give reasons for our decisions and report publicly on the regulatory action we take.

3. We therefore aim to be: transparent, consistent, proportionate and targeted as we undertake our regulatory role and to be accountable for our actions [↩]
4. www.bis.gov.uk/files/file44593.pdf [↩]