Consultation on amendments to our education and training standards and guidance

This consultation proposes changes to both our education and training standards and associated guidance. As the regulator, we have identified key areas where we feel we can make improvements to the quality and consistency of social work education through these changes.

An overview of the changes is provided below. All of the proposals have been informed by extensive engagement with stakeholders across the sector.

Standard 2.1: proposed changes to placement requirements

Challenges

Our current experience, intelligence and learning from inspection activity and broader engagement has highlighted ongoing challenges around student placements.

Stakeholders have shared that our current guidance that supports statutory placements and tasks is not reflective of current social work practice. As a result, students’ exposure to the full range of statutory social work is limited and there is an assumption that all statutory settings equate to high quality statutory social work placements, which we have found to not always be the case.

In some cases, students are placed within a statutory setting that does not provide sufficient experience which in turn impacts their readiness for practise. The current standard and guidance doesn’t allow us to delve deeper into these cases and consider the quality of placements through our current inspection framework. Therefore, to achieve our overarching aim ‘to protect the public’, it is necessary to address this.

The changes we have proposed to the standard will allow course providers to make better informed decisions around statutory placement partnerships and potentially increase practice learning opportunities for students.  It will also allow us to be more robust in our approach to this critical part of social work education and training and our quality assurance of it.

We also know through our inspection activity that our guidance is being interpreted differently by different providers. This can lead to a lack of consistency in students’ experience of placements, meaning that again, some students are not fully prepared for practice by the end of their training.

We are proposing to amend the standard from:

Ensure that students spend at least 200 days (including up to 30 skills days) gaining different experiences and learning in practice settings. Each student will have:

• placements in at least two practice settings providing contrasting experiences; and
• a minimum of one placement taking place within a statutory setting, providing experience of sufficient numbers of statutory social work tasks involving high risk decision making and legal interventions

To:

Ensure that students spend at least 200 days gaining different experiences and learning in practice settings. This may include up to 30 skills days.

Each student must have (all of the following):

• placements in 2 or more practice settings providing contrasting experiences
• a minimum of one placement taking place within a statutory setting
• the statutory placement must provide sufficient exposure to statutory social work tasks, involving high-risk decision making and legal interventions, which prepare them for the realities of high-volume, high-risk work

We have also clarified our definition of what we consider statutory tasks within the guidance section for this standard.

Additionally, we’ve proposed a requirement for students to spend a minimum of 60% of their placement days working in a face-to-face environment. While we support hybrid working models, it is important that students and apprentices gain the face-to-face experience and support they need to build the knowledge, skills and behaviours necessary for social work practice.

Proposed outcomes

By making the proposed changes we will ensure students get sufficient experience of statutory social work. This will ensure that they are prepared to practice in high-risk settings with complex decision-making and statutory interventions. This should also allow more placements to be offered that reflect current social work practice. The addition of the new readiness for professional practice guidance and the knowledge, skills and behaviour statements will further support students to recognise and respond to need, risk and harm.

Additions to the guidance provide clarity and structure around the definitions. This will mean course providers will have to ensure that placements meet these requirements and provide evidence of this to us. These changes will also allow us to delve deeper into placement activity as part of our inspection cycle.

Ultimately, we expect to see more consistently trained social workers entering the profession with the right experience.

We are committed to maintaining high quality placement opportunities, and we will continue to engage with the sector to monitor this.

Reduction in the number of standards

We are proposing to reduce the number of standards from 45 to 40 by making the following changes:

1. Merge standards 3.7 and 3.1 to remove duplication

Current standard 3.7

Ensure that a lead social worker is in place to hold overall professional responsibility for the course. This person must be appropriately qualified and experienced, and on the register.

Current standard 3.1

Ensure courses are supported by a management and governance plan that includes the roles, responsibilities and lines of accountability of individuals and governing groups in the delivery, resourcing and quality management of the course.

Proposed merged standard 3.1

Ensure that a lead social worker is in place to hold overall professional responsibility for the course and that courses are supported by a management and governance framework.

2. Merge and amend standards 3.4 and 3.5 to remove duplication and expand on the involvement of practice educators as a key stakeholder

Current standard 3.4

Ensure that employers are involved in elements of the course, including but not limited to the management and monitoring of courses and the allocation of practice education.

Current standard 3.5

Ensure that regular and effective monitoring, evaluation and improvement systems are in place, and that these involve employers, people with lived experience of social work, and students.

Proposed merged standard 3.4

Ensure that regular and effective monitoring, evaluation and improvement systems are in place, and that these involve employers, practice educators, people with lived experience of social work, and students.

3. Merge standards 4.9 and 5.8 to remove duplication

Current standard 4.9

Ensure that assessments are mapped to the curriculum and are appropriately sequenced to match students’ progression through the course.

Current standard 5.8

Ensure there is an effective process in place for students to make academic appeals.

Proposed merged standard 4.7

Ensure that you design assessments that are robust, reliable and valid, and allow those who successfully complete the course to have developed the knowledge, skills and behaviours necessary to meet the professional standards. You should include regular monitoring and evaluation of assessments to ensure that they remain robust and reliable.

4. Merge standards 4.10 and 5.7 to remove duplication

Current standard 4.10

Provide timely and meaningful feedback to students on their progression and performance in assessments.

Current standard 5.7

Provide timely and meaningful feedback to students on their progression and performance in assessments.

Proposed merged standard 4.9

Provide timely and meaningful feedback to students throughout the course to support their ongoing development, progression and performance in assessments.

5. Remove standard 4.7

Standard 4.7

Ensure that the number of hours spent in structured academic learning under the direction of an educator is sufficient to ensure that students meet the required level of competence.

We propose removing this standard as we do not set any requirements regarding the number of hours spent in academic structured learning.

Standard wording amended

During this review we carefully considered our current wording of the standards and propose to make several changes set out below.

Minor amendments

We have revised the wording of some standards to provide greater clarity on our expectations. We have not included the detail of all changes here, but the full proposals can be found in the revised draft standards. Examples include:

• We have added the word ‘behaviours’ to enable the integration of the knowledge, skills and behaviour statements (KSBs) into regulation through our standards and the new readiness for professional practice guidance. Affected standards include 1.1, 2.2, 4.1, 4.7 and 4.12.
• We have refined some of the wording between standards 2.3 and 2.4 to remove overlap and provide clear distinctions between what each standard requires.
• We have moved standard 5.6 from student support to practice learning environment, and renumbered it 2.8, as it is more appropriate under this heading.

Education and training supporting guidance documents

In the course of our work since publishing our current guidance, we have recognised the need for greater clarity on how course providers can meet our education and training standards. The key proposed changes to our guidance our outlined below.

Review and merging of guidance documents

We currently have 3 individual guidance documents that support the education and training standards:

• qualifying education and training standards guidance
• guidance on practice placements
• guidance on the assessment of social work students

These have been reviewed and merged so that all relevant guidance relating to each standard now sits alongside that standard. The exception to this is where we make reference to the new readiness for professional practice guidance document, which sits separately.

To ensure consistency and clarity, we have reviewed the supporting guidance so that it aligns with the associated standard. This is particularly relevant for standard 2.1 where we have provided more information on:

• what we would expect a statutory placement to include and further detail on what we would consider to be a statutory task
• the addition of the NHS mental health trusts
• an expanded list of the legal frameworks that tasks can be undertaken through
• how and where skills days could be used with particular reference to attendance
• our position on the use of simulated placements
• our position on hybrid working

Fast track and apprenticeship routes

We have expanded the guidance around fast track and apprenticeship routes into social work. This provides greater clarity on the differences between the qualifying routes into the profession. All routes are expected to meet the education and training standards, but it is now clearer how different types of courses might meet the standards in different ways.

Clarification of requirements

While we do not wish to be prescriptive, some of our proposed changes to the guidance provide more information about how a standard could be met and the types of activities that could be undertaken. We have also added clear subheadings in the guidance that supports the standard it relates to. This is to ensure we are clear about all areas of the standard that need to be met.

Where there is an expectation or requirement, language such as ‘should’ and ‘must’ is used. Where there is a suggestion, but not a requirement, we have used language such as ‘could’ and ‘might’.

Read the proposed education and training standards guidance.