Guide to Accreditation
One of the major tasks of NCDT is to accredit courses in further and higher education in the UK on behalf of the industry.
Accreditation - aims to give students confidence that the courses they choose are recognised by the drama profession as being relevant to the purposes of their employment; and that the profession has confidence that the people they employ who have completed these courses have the skills and attributes required for the continuing health of the industry.
NCDT’s accreditation system is highly focused on the assurance of quality in the professional components of accredited courses. Courses are monitored in between visits by our Continuing Contact system. A detailed guide of the Continuing contact system is available here.
A copy of the NCDT Guide to accreditation including detailed criteria and procedures is available is now available to download.
Outline of the Accreditation System
The Review Committee
The Review Committee consists of 14 trained subject specialists who are responsible for everything to do with the accreditation of courses.
Review Committee Members cover all of the following skills areas;
Acting Casting Dance & Movement Directing FE/HE Film
Voice Musical Theatre Production Management Radio
Representation Stage Management Technical Television
Vocational Drama School Training
The Continuing Contact system exists to maintain contact with accredited courses in between panel visits. This is achieved in two ways:
Annual Review: viewing positive ways in which the courses continues to fulfil the aim of accreditation, identifying any areas that provide opportunities for development and providing access for schools to specialists and specialist advice.
Show reporting: ensuring that public productions mounted by accredited courses are covered as comprehensively as possible by professionals whose views Schools respect.
Annual Review
Central to the reform process was the recognition that Schools were under an increasing burden of external scrutiny. As far as possible all information NCDT requests will be documentation produced for other bodies or as part of the School’s own internal annual assessments. These reports will be examined by a scrutiny team selected from the Review Committee along with file of show reports which have been submitted for each course, in order to assess if the course continues to fulfil the aim of accreditation.
Show Reporting
A recruitment system has been employed to develop a wide pool of industry professionals who have been trained to report on the quality of public productions presented by accredited courses. Show Reporting will be undertaken by:
- Show Reporters and
- Performance Reviewers.
Show Reporters are individuals who are required to attend performances as part of their regular employment (e.g. casting directors and agents). This currently includes the BBC and ITV staff casting directors
Performance Reviewers are specialist individuals who have been recruited by a rigorous selection process, with at least five years’ recent professional experience, a good general knowledge of current practice and a keen interest in the development of drama training in the UK.
All public productions mounted by accredited courses have at least one performance attended by show reporters or performance reviewers.
The Accreditation Visit Process
The actual process of re-accreditation now consists of two stages, a half-day Documentary Review and the one-day accreditation visit.
Documentary Review
The purpose of the DR is to provide a report for the accreditation visit panel that indicates the positive ways in which the course fulfils the aim of accreditation and any areas that provide opportunities for development. The Documentary Review team consists of an experienced and trained accreditation panel chair, an individual with experience in evaluating documentation in either FE or HE and a subject specialist
The Documentary Review team will consider:
- Extant documentation provided by the school which provides evidence that the course under consideration is fulfilling the aim of accreditation
- Continuing contact material, such as Annual Reviews and Performance Reports
- Statistical information and course profiles compiled by NCDT
The Accreditation Visit
Only professionals trained in the new NCDT accreditation process will be eligible to sit on accreditation panels. The panel will include:
- The Documentary Review Chairman
- Three skills-based specialists whose areas of expertise are appropriate to the course under consideration (when appropriate, one will be a Performance Reviewer)
Activities on the day will include:
- A meeting with senior management relevant to the course
- A meeting with staff relevant to the course
- A meeting with the students
- A tour of the facilities and resources relevant to the aim of accreditation
- Visits to Relevant Classes (classes that impact directly on professional preparation and practice. Selection and number of classes to be visited shall be by negotiation before and during the visit, paying particular attention to any issues raised in the Documentary Review report. The School shall be able to recommend any classes to be visited, especially if they consider them to be examples of good practice.)
- Private Panel meetings
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