Introduction
Publishing a programme is the final step towards making your programme ready to use. This guide will walk you through the process, from requesting approval to ensuring all necessary details are complete. By following these steps, you can move your programme from draft to published status, so it's ready to enroll your first learners.
User Role
- Programme Contributor
- Programme Manager
How to: Publish a Programme
The following instructions cover the steps you need to take to publish a programme.
How to Publish a Programme - Written Steps
There are various different statuses that a programme can be in. Whilst a programme and activities are being created, it will always be in a “draft” status. The programme status can always be seen to the right of the programme title on the programmes page:
1. Request Approval
When the person/people responsible for creating a programme feel that it’s ready, the next action is to change the status to “request approval”. Open the programme from the programmes page and navigate to the “summary” tab for standards:
Or the “Confirm” tab for frameworks:
Now scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the “Request Approval” button:
This button is in place for quality assurance purposes. An appropriate member of staff within your organisation will have the relevant permission to approve and “publish” a programme. Once the “Request Approval” button has been pressed, the programme status changes to “Awaiting Approval”:
2. Awaiting Approval
The “Awaiting Approval” status is in place to prompt another person in the organisation to look over the programme and confirm that it’s fit for purpose. Some of the areas this member of staff should check are:
- Does the programme cover all aspects of the standards and associated qualifications?
- Does it meet the required planned Off The Job learning hours?
- Is there a sufficient amount of activities?
- Is the content of the activities learner friendly?
- Are appropriate resources attached to the programme?
- Does the programme have practice versions of the End-Point Assessment?
We recommend the following areas are consulted when reviewing the configuration of a programme to make sure it reflects the requirements of the training provider:
- Compliance Subject Matter Expert – to review the configuration of the programme relating to compliance such as mandatory and optional components, suggested duration, funding of component aims, optional unit selection, OTJ thresholds, etc.
- Programme Subject Matter Expert – to quality assure the learning activities, criteria mappings and overall proposed learning experience.
- Functional skill Subject Matter Expert – to review the configuration of functional skill durations and any specific learning activities included in the programme design.
3. Withdraw Approval or Publish
If it is deemed that further work is needed for this programme, the staff member can scroll to the bottom of the “Summary” tab and hit “Withdraw Approval”:
This will then change the programme status back to “draft” to allow more editing work to be carried out. Once the member of staff feels the programme is ready to enrol learners onto, they can publish the programme. To do this, navigate to the “summary” tab on the programmes page and scroll to the bottom of the page and hit the “Publish” button:
The status of the programme will now change to “Published”. If no changes are required at the awaiting approval stage the programme the publish button can be selected.
The programme is now ready to enrol learners onto.
It’s worth noting that once a programme is published, your ability to edit the programme will be limited. You will be able to edit any of the text boxes and links within an activity. However, you will not be able to add activities to the main programme.
The only way you can add more activities to a published programme is through individual learners that are enrolled on the programme. This is done by going into a learner’s plan and adding an activity specifically for them.