What Is IQA and What Does an IQA Do?

Internal Quality Assurance (IQA) is the process by which an organisation checks that its assessors are making consistent and valid decisions when awarding vocational qualifications.

Every awarding body-regulated qualification must have an IQA function in place. Without it, qualifications cannot be formally awarded.

The IQA function sits between the assessors (who assess learners) and the External Quality Assurer (EQA) — the awarding body's own representative who checks the organisation's quality processes from outside.

An IQA's primary responsibility is to sample and review assessment decisions made by assessors. This means selecting a representative proportion of learner portfolios and checking that the assessment judgements made are accurate, consistent, and meet the qualification standards.

IQAs also support and develop assessors — feeding back on assessment decisions, identifying areas where additional support or training is needed, and helping assessors maintain consistency across their caseload.

IQAs maintain quality assurance records: sampling plans, observation records, feedback to assessors, and minutes of standardisation meetings.

Sampling is the process of selecting a proportion of assessment decisions to review. IQAs do not check every learner portfolio — that would be unworkable. Instead, they select samples that give them confidence that overall quality is maintained.

Sampling strategies vary: an IQA might sample a set percentage of each assessor's caseload, focus on new assessors more heavily, or target specific qualification units where accuracy is most critical.

When reviewing a sample, the IQA checks whether the assessor's decisions are justified by the evidence, whether feedback to learners is clear and appropriate, and whether the assessment documentation is complete and accurate.

Standardisation is how assessment organisations ensure that all assessors are applying qualification standards in the same way.

IQAs organise and run standardisation activities — typically group meetings where assessors review example portfolios or assessment decisions together, discuss borderline cases, and agree on a shared interpretation of the standards.

Standardisation helps prevent "assessor drift" — where individual assessors gradually develop their own interpretation of standards that diverges from the agreed benchmark.

Beyond sampling and standardisation, IQAs act as a professional support resource for assessors. This might involve countersigning assessment decisions made by trainee assessors, advising on how to handle unusual evidence situations, and providing ongoing feedback to help assessors improve their practice.

IQAs are also responsible for inducting new assessors into the organisation's quality processes and ensuring they understand the documentation requirements.

A core responsibility of the IQA is ensuring that assessment decisions are valid — meaning that the judgement accurately reflects whether the learner has or has not met the qualification standard.

This means checking for over-assessment (passing learners whose evidence does not clearly meet the criteria) and under-assessment (failing or querying learners whose evidence is clearly sufficient).

The IQA is the internal check on these decisions. Without a robust IQA function, learners could be awarded qualifications they have not genuinely earned, or denied qualifications they deserve.