Frequently asked questions

How can I respond to the consultations? 

There are 3 separate consultations which you can respond to by completing online surveys. You can respond to all of them or the ones that most interest you.

You can also attend our online consultation events in June and July. 

Who has Social Work England worked with to develop the proposals?

We have carried out extensive pre-consultation engagement across the sector. We have worked with: 

• course providers
• employer and placement partners
• people with lived experience of social work
• students
• the Education and Training Advisory Forum (ETAF) and Practice Education Development Group
• external forums, for example, the apprenticeship trailblazer group
• education quality assurance inspector partners

We have incorporated learning from our first cycle of reapprovals of courses, which we shared in our Preparing for practice: Social work education in England report.

If these proposals are agreed, when will they be implemented?

We will consider all consultation responses before publishing the outcome and any revised standards, guidance and rules in spring 2027. We will also publish an implementation date. This is likely to be autumn 2027.

How will you support course providers to make changes to their courses?

We want to give course providers as much notice as possible whiles taking account of our requirement to have a maximum of 6 years between inspections. Our education quality assurance (EQA) team will work with course providers to support them in a similar way to when the current standards and guidance came in to regulation in 2021.

Why are you proposing these changes now?

• we have completed our first full reapproval cycle of all social work courses in England. We want to embed learning and feedback from course providers before we begin the next cycle
• since we launched the current standards and guidance there have been a number of changes in social work education and practice. Some of these were accelerated by the COVID19 pandemic and also by societal and political changes 
• in October 2024 we published our knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) statements. To bring the KSBs into regulation, we need to embed them into the education and training standards. We could only do this at the end of the first reapproval cycle, and when we had produced new ‘readiness for professional practice’ guidance on how the KSBs should be used

Are you consulting on the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs?) 

The KSBs are not in the scope of our consultations because we consulted on them previously.
We have refreshed the structure of the KSBs so they are up to date, maintain a focus on student outcomes and enable course providers to integrate the KSBs into course curriculum. 

The refreshed structure, alongside our new readiness for professional practice guidance, aims to provide clarity on how the KSBs should be used. We have also made some amendments to ensure greater alignment with other post qualifying frameworks, such as the Early Career Development Programme. The statements themselves have not changed. 

Will I need to map my course to the KSBs if we already map to the professional standards?

Currently, we ask course providers to map their courses to our professional standards and then provide documentary evidence, ahead of an inspection, showing how they meet the education and training standards. 

We plan to ask that course providers map their courses to the KSBs in the first instance, as the KSBs have been designed to ensure that they prepare students to meet the professional standards upon successful completion of the course. We have developed a mapping document of the KSBs to our professional standards to help with this. 

We expect that course providers go beyond mapping by ensuring that students are made aware of how and where they will be able to gain the KSBs and how and where this should be demonstrated and measured. 

Why have you proposed to merge the separate pieces of standards guidance but kept the readiness for professional guidance separate?

We are proposing to merge our 3 existing pieces of guidance (the education and training standards guidance, practice placement guidance and assessment guidance). This is to simplify and streamline them for course providers. 

Readiness for professional practice is a new piece of guidance that specifically supports the integration and use of the knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) within courses. We propose publishing it separately from the other pieces of guidance to reflect its status as a new piece of curriculum guidance and to support its effective implementation. 

The KSBs and readiness for professional practice guidance should be read together. They include signposting between the 2 to help course providers navigate new course curriculum requirements. 

How and when will course inspections be affected by the consultation proposals?

The details of the inspection process won't be finalised until we have the results of the consultation and confirm the new standards and guidance. The EQA team will then be in touch with course providers. We will consider all consultation responses before publishing the outcome and any revised standards, guidance and rules in spring 2027. We will also publish an implementation date. This is likely to be autumn 2027.      

If a course has recently been approved or reapproved against the current standards, will it maintain its approval?

Yes. It will continue to be an approved course. Future reapprovals of the course will be against the proposed revised standards. If these come into regulation, the course must meet these standards.

I’m a course provider wanting to develop a new social work course. Should I wait for the outcome of the consultation?

We will continue to approve new courses against our 2021 education and training standards until we have published the outcome of the consultation and implementation timeframes.

When would any changes to the rules take effect?

Our regulations state that, following a public consultation, we must submit proposed rules to the Secretary of State for Education, providing a minimum period of 28 days for review. New rules may only come into effect if the 28 day period has passed without objection or earlier if the Secretary of State and regulator agree. Therefore, we will continue to engage with the sector post consultation to advise of the date when revised rules will be implemented. 

What is the 6 year rule and what does this mean for course providers? 

We interpret the current rules to mean that the reapproval for each individual course should be carried out as close to 6 years after its last reapproval. This means repeating the same 3 year schedule every 6 years and gives no flexibility in approach, for both course providers and us as the regulator. The addition of the 2 new proposed rules means that can notify course providers of their next inspection date within the 6 year timeframe. This will be at the point of reapproval or following the completion of the reapproval cycle. This should allow course providers to better prepare for future reapprovals. 

If we proceed with the changes to the 6 year rule, we will contact course providers about when to expect their next reapproval inspection. This will still be within the 6 year timeframe.