Accreditation Overview

According to the ETQA Regulations, 1998 (Government Gazette No. 6290, Volume 399 of 8 September 1998) accreditation is:
"the certification, usually for a particular period of time, of a person, a body or an institution as having the capacity to fulfil a particular function in the quality assurance system set up by the South African Qualifications Authority in terms of the SAQA Act 1995."

Accreditation is, essentially, the stamp of approval indicating that the accrediting body (e.g. SAQA) is satisfied that the accredited body (e.g. SETA ETQA) meets the requirements for assuring quality. SAQA is responsible for accrediting ETQAs and these, in turn, are responsible for accrediting education and training providers as per the diagram below:

Levels of Accreditation

The CHIETA ETQA requires that you meet a series of criteria that are set out in detail in Section 11 of the Provider accreditation guidelines. These criteria have been developed in alignment with SAQA policy and aim to ensure that you adhere to the necessary policies, procedures and systems that ensure the provision of quality education and training and the protection of the learner and the public.

The two levels of accreditation are the following:

1. Full accreditation

All providers are ultimately required to achieve full accreditation status and this means compliance with all of the criteria outlined in Section 11. If you have 100% of the criteria in place to the satisfaction of the CHIETA ETQA, you will be awarded full accreditation status. You should note that there is no need to first become provisionally accredited if you have all the criteria in place and you are encouraged to aim to achieve all the accreditation criteria as soon as possible.

Once you have received full accreditation status from the CHIETA ETQA, you will then remain accredited for a period of five years (if you adhere to the conditions of accreditation), at which point you will have to re-apply for accreditation status.

Your organisation will be monitored and audited in the course of your accreditation in order to ensure that you continue to meet the criteria for accreditation. This is discussed in more detail in section 10.6. If the ETQA finds that you are not adhering to the criteria for accreditation, it has the right to take action against you as a provider. If you are not complying with the conditions of accreditation, or do not take remedial action as requested by the CHIETA ETQA, the ETQA has the right to de-accredit your organisation.

2. Provisional accreditation

The CHIETA acknowledges that some providers may need a certain period of time to put certain criteria in place and will give you provisional accreditation status for a pre-defined period, provided that you meet the essential minimum requirements of provisional accreditation to begin with.

If the CHIETA finds that you have a few "easy-to-fix" criteria not in place, the ETQA will consult with you to come up with a suitable time frame in which you will be required to implement the outstanding criteria. If the criteria will require more work and time to put in place, a longer time frame will be negotiated. You need to note, however, that the absolute maximum time that you can remain provisionally accredited is two years. If you have not been able to put the outstanding criteria in place within two years, you will possibly lose your provisional status and will be required to re-apply for accreditation from scratch. This is to ensure that you aim to continually develop and improve your practices and systems in alignment with CHIETA's quality standards.

As mentioned, the CHIETA has specified a set of minimum criteria that you need to have in place in order to get provisional accreditation status and these are outlined in Section 11. The CHIETA considers these selected criteria to be the essential minimum requirements you must have in place to ensure the protection of learners and the quality of provision. You should therefore not apply for accreditation status from the CHIETA until the minimum provisional requirements are in place. The CHIETA cannot give any provider provisional accreditation status until the essential minimum requirements are in place.

During the specified time that you are provisionally accredited, you should develop and implement a plan to ensure that the remaining criteria for full accreditation are met. You should make sure that the plan is realistic and that you have the necessary human and other resources to ensure that you are able to adhere to the plan.

NOTE: If a unit standard or qualification is formally de-registered from the National Qualifications Framework within the two or five years of provisional or full accreditation, you will lose provisional or full accreditation status for that unit standard and/or qualification. This is the case because the CHIETA ETQA does not have the authority to quality-assure unit standards or qualifications that are not registered on the National Qualifications Framework.