External Quality Assurance

Independent verification of an organisation’s compliance with not only their own stated policies and procedures in achieving stated outcomes, but also meeting other organisations requirements where they have signed up to meet their required quality standards.

The term is often shortened to EQA and is a means of providing confidence to third parties in the organisation’s commitment and consistent achievement of stated outcomes. An example of EQA is that which is undertaken by City & Guilds (as the external party) on those organisations which offer City & Guild qualifications.

Some other benefits of EQA include:

• Enhancing the organisation’s reputation and can increase customer confidence in their products and services.

• Ensuring regulatory compliance, which may be essential if an organisation is to continue having a relationship with a regulatory body, for example, such as City & Guilds.

• Providing a mean for continuous improvement, identifying potential ways of improving policies, procedures, quality standards and staff development.

• Providing a means of benchmarking against similar organisations, identifying potential cost-effectiveness and quality improvements.