Corporate report

Supporting Growth: Regulatory Efficiency Report 2025

Published 22 July 2025

Applies to England

Introduction

Ofqual is the independent qualifications and assessments regulator for England. It is our responsibility to maintain standards and confidence in regulated qualifications and assessments.

As outlined in Ofqual’s 2025 to 2028 strategy, regulated qualifications open doors to continued education, employment, and independent living. They provide a fair and reliable way for individuals to demonstrate their achievements and access opportunities that match their skills and ambitions, in turn supporting efficiency in the labour market.

Alongside Ofqual’s statutory objectives, Ofqual has duties to:

• keep our regulatory functions under review
• not impose or maintain unnecessary regulatory burden
• have regard to the desirability of facilitating innovation
• consider the impact of our work on economic growth

Ofqual thinks about this as regulatory efficiency: achieving the maximum impact toward our statutory objectives for the lowest cost to those we regulate. In pursuit of this, we seek at all times to keep regulatory activity proportionate, to reduce the administrative burden on regulated entities, and to improve how we work with other parts of government.

Our Annual report sets out the impacts Ofqual has had in 2024 to 2025. This report – formerly published under the title “Regulatory burden statement” – completes the picture by setting out our actions to improve regulatory efficiency in 2024 to 2025 and outlining our plans for 2025 to 2026.

Improving regulatory efficiency in 2024 to 2025

Proportionate regulatory scrutiny

Ofqual is a pro-growth and pro-innovation regulator. Our processes to scrutinise new organisations, qualifications and innovations are important in assuring the quality that maintains standards and confidence in qualifications. However, we work hard to ensure these processes are minimal, proportionate and make compliance straightforward.

This year we have:

• begun to improve the recognition gateway website to make it easier for prospective awarding organisations to apply and we are improving our guidance and initial engagement to ensure expectations are clear and support compliance
• improved our initial engagement with awarding organisations aiming to accredit new qualifications, such as GCSEs and A levels, as well as those engaging with our technical evaluations for Functional Skills, to ensure expectations are clear and support compliance
• streamlined technical evaluations of apprenticeship assessments, so that awarding organisations receive a single streamlined report across several apprenticeship standards, coupled with a risk-based follow up
• set out clear parameters for the sector on the use of AI in qualifications and assessments, providing regulatory certainty to support evidence-based AI innovation through research
• made permanent our regulatory innovation service, providing early feedback on new ideas, which helps support compliance and therefore speed to market

Reducing administrative burden

Regulatory activity is important to maintain standards and confidence in qualifications, but it imposes costs on regulated organisations. Ofqual seeks at all times to ensure the administrative burden of meeting and evidencing compliance is minimal, proportionate, and reducing.

This year we have:

• developed a fraud action plan that provides a range of practical actions to identify and prevent fraud, reducing the time awarding organisations need to develop effective policy through sharing best practice
• removed overlaps between subject-level and qualification-level rules and made minor adjustments to interpretation conditions for several Vocational and Technical Qualifications
• engaged with exam boards for feedback ahead of public consultations where appropriate – such as the inclusion of equation sheets for GCSE mathematics, physics and combined science – to ensure policies are well-evidenced and implementation timelines are realistic
• improved the efficiency of our data collections including aligning malpractice data requests across different qualification types and reducing the frequency of some data collections over the summer where this would not compromise our ability to regulate during a crucial period
• incorporated awarding organisation feedback on data collections by extending an improvement made to one collection template into other appropriate templates for greater consistency
• made system improvements to make it easier to submit the annual Statement of Compliance by allowing awarding organisations to submit necessary data in a format that is most convenient for them
• improved the prompts awarding organisations get when submitting information about important events to clarify the key information we need, reducing the need for follow-up queries
• held regular engagement sessions with awarding organisations, where we share information and research to support compliance and invite feedback on our regulatory framework and operations

Improving sector coherence

Ofqual works with a wide range of government organisations. We seek to lead and improve cross-governmental working, so that regulated organisations experience streamlined requests and information from across government.

This year we have:

• worked with the Institute for Apprenticeship and Technical Education (IfATE) – and now with Skills England – to de-duplicate the reporting of delivery issues with end-point assessment. Previously, awarding organisations liaised with both Ofqual and IfATE, while now they only need to liaise with Ofqual should an issue be limited to a specific group of apprentices
• aligned the review process for new T Levels and qualifications involved in the first cycle of the post-16 qualifications review between Ofqual and IfATE, avoiding conflicts in what is reported back to awarding organisations during the review and approvals process
• established Responsible Officers in the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) to act as authoritative points of contact, and revising the Memorandum of Understanding with STA to better define the working relationship and how information can be exchanged
• worked with the Security Industry Authority, Construction Industry Training Board, and the Construction Skills Certification Scheme to improve data sharing around fraud, formalising arrangements for information sharing to give a richer picture of issues

Improving regulatory efficiency in 2025 to 2026

Ofqual will continue to improve regulatory efficiency over the next year, maximising our impact at a minimal and proportionate cost to the sector. Our plans include:

Proportionate regulatory scrutiny

• Reducing the amount of information we collect from awarding organisations in our annual Statement of Compliance exercise by removing detailed key lines of enquiry.
• Streamlining recognition decisions relating to apprenticeship assessments, to be in line with our risk-based approach for other qualifications.
• Reviewing our up-front review process for the post-16 qualifications review and considering how these interact with other parts of the system

Reduced administrative burden

• Improving the efficiency and experience of our accreditation process by building on awarding organisation feedback.
• Reviewing our annual data collections to ensure that their frequency and scope remains relevant, reducing burden where appropriate.
• Improving our data collection specifications to improve their clarity and consistency, making it easier for awarding organisations when providing us with data.
• Publishing the outcomes of our consultation on updating our Taking Regulatory Action policy which includes proposals to support awarding organisation compliance.
• Publishing the outcomes of our consultation on introducing principles into the General Conditions of Recognition, which support compliance with our regulations.

Improving sector coherence

• Working with DfE and Skills England to support the development of a more efficient regulatory system for apprenticeship assessments.
• Continue to develop our approach to national assessment regulation by optimising the scheduling and efficiency of regulatory activities and updating routine processes.
• Work with DfE and other government departments to implement changes if required following the conclusion of the Curriculum and Assessment Review.

Annex

This annex provides supporting data on our routine regulatory activities, which are essential to maintaining high-quality outcomes. As with the Regulatory Burden Statement in previous years, it is included to offer context for the efficiency improvements detailed in the main report.

Engagement with existing and prospective awarding organisations

Table 1: Summary of the webinars and virtual events from April 2024 to March 2025

Ofqual-led event	Dates
AO Symposium	April 2024
VTQ Research and Reflective Practice Forum	April 2024
Tackling Qualification Fraud workshop	May 2024
Tackling Qualification Fraud workshop	June 2024
AO Governance Forum	October 2024
Statement of Compliance webinar – systems	October 2024
Statement of Compliance webinar - key lines of enquiry	October 2024
Ofqual consultation launch on introducing principles into the General Conditions of Recognition Principles webinar	November 2024
Introducing Principles into the General Conditions of Recognition online webinar	January 2025
CASLO face to face seminar	March 2025
AO Symposium	March 2025

Recognition regulatory activity

Table 2: An overview of all recognition decisions relating to new market entries or expansions 2020-2025, and those relating to organisations offering end-point assessments (EPA) only

Regulatory activity	1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025	1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024	1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023	1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022	1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021
Recognition decisions	300	407	623	477	203
EPA only	245	312	535	428	149

Compliance and enforcement regulatory activity

Table 3: An overview of compliance and enforcement regulatory activity, 2020 to 2025

Regulatory activity	1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025	1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024	1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023	1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022	1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021
Compliance[footnote 1]	17	20	77	Not reported
Audits	10[footnote 2]	1	1	0	0
Investigations	1	6	5	0	7
Undertakings[footnote 3]	3	2	1	1	4
Directions[footnote 4]	1	0	0	0	0
Special Conditions[footnote 5]	14	11	18	25	8
Fines	5	0	2	1	0

Consultations

Table 4: An overview of consultation activity 2020 to 2025

Consultations	1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025	1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024	1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023	1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022	1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021
Consultation outcomes published	1	8	8	12	10
Consultations opened	3	5	10	13	14

---

1. Specific information gathering exercises ↩

2. Proactive compliance activity, including audits, has been gradually reintroduced following a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic ↩

3. Commitment by an awarding organisation to take specific actions ↩

4. Directing an awarding organisation to take or not take specific steps ↩

5. Placing additional conditions on an awarding organisation ↩