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Major change
Following our approval of an education programme, the programme obtains what we refer to as ‘open-ended approval’ and is then subject to our monitoring processes.
A major change is a change to a programme of study that significantly alters the way in which our standards of education and training (SETs) are met and therefore how graduates will attain the standards of proficiency (SOPs).
Not all changes to a programme are major changes. The Supplementary Information for Education Providers relates some common examples of changes to programmes and what the impact on our standards can be.
If you are unsure whether the scale of the change impacts upon our SETs or you believe the impact to be significant you should tell us about the change by completing a major change notification form.
Changes should ideally be reported to us before they occur but it is possible to assess changes to programmes that have already taken place.
When a change occurs to a programme, we expect you to consider the impact on how the SETs and SOPs continue to be met. However, we do not require you to notify us of every change to a programme. If a change does not have a significant impact on how a programme meets our standards it can be reported to us in annual monitoring. You should only notify us of changes to your programme that change:
- the overall way in which a programme meets our standards; and/or
- the way a programme is recorded on our website.
We will not automatically make a decision to visit a programme as a result of a periodic review the education provider is conducting. We require evidence of changes significant enough to require a visit. Therefore you will need to give details of what changes to a programme are intended so we can make a decision about whether to visit or not. The major change process is designed to take periodic review cycles into consideration when assessing the most appropriate way to evidence how a programme continues to meet our standards.
You should make an assessment of changes to your programme against our standards. If it appears the programme has significantly changed the way in which it meets our standards, you should notify us as soon as possible by filling out a major change notification form. If you are unsure if the change is significant please contact us as soon as possible for our advice.
More information about the process for telling us about a change is outlined in the flowchart and in the process description that follows. The flowchart has been designed to ensure the notification of major changes is complementary to our approval and annual monitoring processes.
Click here for a flowchart of the process
Notification stage
Once you have determined the change has a significant impacton the way your programme meets our standards, you will need complete the major change notification form. The form is designed to be completed electronically. The form requires you to:
- provide contact details of the individual with whom we should correspond;
- as detailed description as possible of the change or changes to the way the programme meets our standards;
- notify us of any plans to approve the changes internally with a meeting; and
- notify us whether documentation is currently available to assess the changes or if it will become available at a later date.
You are not required at this time to submit supporting documentation, but any evidence to assist in the decision-making process will be useful.
We assess the major change notification form and make a decision based on the information provided about which of our three processes is most appropriate to assess how the programme continues to meet our standards. We can decide to assess the impact of a change on our standards using the annual monitoring, major change or approval processes at this stage. If necessary, we may request additional information to assist in making this decision.
The decision is made on a case-by-case basis. But, in general terms, the table below indicates some of the reasons why we might choose to use each of the processes.
| Process used |
Reason |
| Annual monitoring process |
• a change has no significant impact on our standards.
• a change has been made but it is clear our standards continue to be met.
• the cumulative changes from previous annual monitoring or major change submissions do not have an impact on how our standards are met. |
| Major change process |
• a change has been made to the programme that changes the way in which our standards are met.
• the cumulative changes from previous annual monitoring or major change submissions has an impact on how our standards are met.
• when the change is mapped to our standards using the document in appendix two of the Supplementary Information for Education Providers there is no clear requirement to gather evidence using a visit.
• a periodic review or re-validation meeting has not been scheduled by you.
• documentation is currently available from you to assess the impact of the change on our standards. |
| Approval process |
• a change has been made to the programme that changes the way in which our standards are met.
• the cumulative changes from previous annual monitoring or major change submissions has an impact on how our standards are met.
• when the change is mapped to our standards using the document in appendix two of the Supplementary Information for Education Providers there is a clear requirement to gather evidence using a visit.
• a periodic review or re-validation meeting has been scheduled by you and there is sufficient time to fit it into our visit calendar.
• documentation is not currently available from you to assess the impact of the change on our standards as it is being prepared for a periodic review or re-validation meeting. |
If the decision is made to assess the changes through the annual monitoring process you will be required to provide information on the change when the next annual monitoring audit is completed, so the change can be contextualised with other changes to the programme.
If the decision is made to assess how the programme continues to meet our standards through the approval process you will be informed and asked to complete a visit request form.
If the decision is made to assess how the programme continues to meet our standards through the major change process, information will be sent to our visitors to make an assessment.
Major change visitor assessment
Once the decision has been made to use the major change process to assess the change we will begin allocating visitors to conduct the work.
Normally, two visitors assess the changes to the programme under consideration. At least one visitor is from the relevant part of the Register. We also try as much as possible to balance the experience of the visitors to ensure that there is an appropriate level of experience of the profession across both visitors and when possible there is a mix of clinical and educational experience. All visitors undergo a conflict of interest process.
We will also at this time obtain appropriate documents from you if needed.
You will also be required to map the impact of the change against the standards of education and training using the major change standards of education and training mapping template. You will only be required to provide evidence of how our standards are met if a standard is impacted by the changes to the programme.
The mapping template should make reference to supporting documentary evidence of how our standards continue to be met. This documentation will vary depending on the changes and on the impact on our standards. For guidance on the documentary evidence you should submit, you can consult appendix two of the Supplementary Information for Education Providers or our Standards of education and training guidance document.
In summary, we require the following documentation to send to the visitors.
We will send the documentation to the visitors along with a context pack which contains previous reports from the approval, annual monitoring and major change processes. These reports allow the visitors to contextualise the changes within the history of the development of the programme.
The visitors will then make an assessment of all the available information and recommend an outcome to the Education and Training Committee.
What to do next
Please read through the Supplementary Information for Education Providers which provides more information about the major change process. If there have been changes which impact on how your programme meets our Standards of education and training, you will need to complete the major change notification form.
Please return the form electronically, by fax or by post.
Our contact details are:
Health Professions Council, 184 Kennington Park Road, London, SE11 4BU
Phone: 020 7840 9812
Fax: 020 7820 9684
Email: majorchange@hpc-uk.org
 | Related Documents | Major change process flowchart Adobe PDF Document403kb
POM Major Change SETs cross mapping templateMicrosoft Word Document66kb
Guidance to fill in Major Change Notification FormMicrosoft Word Document33kb
Major Change SETs cross mapping templateMicrosoft Word Document187kb
POM Major Change notification formMicrosoft Word Document89kb
Major change supplementary information for education providersAdobe PDF Document383kb
Standards of education and training guidanceAdobe PDF Document368kb
Standards of education and trainingAdobe PDF Document82kb
Major Change Notification FormMicrosoft Word Document124kb
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