West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service is one of 44 Fire & Rescue services within England and Wales and the fourth biggest Metropolitan Service in England. They service a population of more than two million people and provide emergency cover 24 hours a day, every day of the year. 

With the organisation’s headquarters in Leeds, the service employs over 1,400 staff members who all play their part in promoting safety and well-being across all communities within West Yorkshire. The team encompasses a number of different roles, such as: fire fighter, watch manager, chief fire officer, administration officer and personnel support, together working in unison to respond to emergencies within an efficient manner. Within 2023 alone, the team have effectively responded to 5,629 incidents and 2,140 fire call outs, promoting the organisation’s core values of communication, teamwork and integrity. 
 
Within the West Yorkshire district, there are 5 key areas: Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield encompassing over 30 different fully functioning fire stations.  All of the stations monitor and deliver their own internal training from apprenticeships to experienced staff members.  Regardless of the employee’s experiences within the company, there is a constant need for training for all of its staff members to keep up to date with the latest developments within the firefighting service. 

The WYF&R team contacted Train Aid to upskill its various watch commanders to achieve the Level 4 Award in the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practice (IQA) qualification. The purpose of the training was to ensure that all departments and watches were delivering standardised training consistently across the Yorkshire district. The team also required the qualification to support its young apprentices to train to become qualified firefighters. 

The IQA qualification is one third of the TAQA (teaching, assessing & quality assurance) suite of qualifications and is a fully accredited and nationally recognised and regulated course by Ofqual. It is the highest level of quality assurance qualifications and allows for the holder to monitor a range of assessors and trainers and to provide them with feedback on best practice of their performance. 

Day 1 of the IQA started with the team completing the unit 1 written assignment: Understanding the principles and practices of internally assuring the qualification of assessment. The unit examines the different daily roles and responsibilities of an IQA, the various assessment activities and the systems used for monitoring and how to track assessors’ progress. Learners collaborated together to complete the assignment answers on their laptops and discussed different IQA policies and procedures. Through group work, presentations, videos, debates and discussions, the team passed their unit 1 assignment within a month of classroom and self-study.

On day 2 of the IQA course, the class began unit 2: Internally assure the quality of assessment. This practical unit requires the candidate IQA to produce a portfolio of practical evidence to demonstrate that they can review and monitor a minimum of two assessors. This classroom day focused on developing the practical skills of an IQA and how to monitor a team of assessors from a range of different areas. 

The practical portfolio will contain key documentation such as: an observation plan, meeting plan, sample plan and professional discussions. The candidate IQAs worked together to analyse their current documents and seek out improvements for all future IQAs within their organisation to follow. The team looked at methods for the team to standardise all of their training and practice within all of the different watches. 

On day 3, the final element of the IQA qualification, the cohort moved away from the classroom environment to observe their assessors working within their practical role.

This penultimate assessment involved the candidate IQA observing their assessors and completing an observation report on their performance.

The key elements of the IQA observation is for the observer to see how the candidate provides supportive feedback to the learner they are monitoring.

The West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue team successfully achieved their Level 4 Award in the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practice (IQA) within three months from the beginning of the first classroom day in Yorkshire. The team benefitted from the regular classroom training days and the zoom meeting appointments in order to keep track of their qualification progress. The team appreciated the model answers and YouTube channel guidance.

The West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue team were fully engaged and attentive throughout the IQA course classroom days. They worked hard together to reflect on their current systems for monitoring their team of assessors and discussed new policies and procedures and analysed effective systems for observing their staff members to fulfil their training needs. The team explained how they would take their training into their new roles and felt more confident within their new IQA roles to be able to monitor their assessors and provide support.

Nick (Education and Training Manager)