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Apply for QTS in England - Application Forms

The lifecycle of an application generally follows this linear process of a number of distinct stages:

Draft stage

Before an application is submitted (stored in the submitted_at column) all the information from the applicant must be submitted, this information is mostly stored in the ApplicationForm model, with some additional information stored in the WorkHistory and Qualification models.

Documents and uploads

A number of pieces of information from applicants requires them to upload documents. For this we have a Document model that links polymorphically to any kind of object, which itself has many Upload models which represent the files themselves (which are stored in Azure Storage).

Pre-assessment stage

Once submitted, an application will move in to the pre-assessment stage only if requires_preliminary_check or teaching_authority_provides_written_statement is set to true (which itself comes from the region).

Pre-assessment requires the assessor to either:

  • perform a preliminary check against some basic pieces of information
  • wait for the letter of professional standing to be received from the teaching authority

Not started stage

Once submitted, or once pre-assessment has completed, the application waits for assessment in the not started stage.

Assessment stage

The assessor will now pick up the application to be assessed.

Failure Reasons

These represent a reason why an application might fail the assessment stage. Failure doesn't necessarily mean the application will be declined, as there are two types of failure reasons:

  • Declinable
    • If present, the application can only be declined after assessment. A note from the assessor is not required, but can be provided.
  • Further information-able
    • If present (and provided there are no declinable reasons), the application can proceed after assessment requesting further information from the applicant. A note from the assessor is required.

The failure reasons are stored in the database in the SelectedFailureReason model linked to each AssessmentSection.

Further information requests

Sometimes there is missing information in the original application and the applicant has one attempt to provide additional information. Once the failure reasons have been selected and the assessor submits the assessment:

  • The assessment decision is made (request_further_information)
  • A FurtherInformationRequest is created.
  • An email is sent to the applicant.

Verification stage

If the application passes assessment, parts of the application now need to be verified:

  • Letter of professional standing (ProfessionalStandingRequest)
  • Qualification certificates (QualificationRequest)
  • Work references (ReferenceRequest)

Completed stage

An application finishes with three possible states:

Awarded

Only if the application passes the assessment and verification stage can the assessor award QTS to the applicant.

Declined

This can happen at a number of points in the process for a number of reasons.

The reasons for decline are calculated dynamically according to a number of rules.

Withdrawn

The applicant can choose to withdraw application before it's fully assessed, this is functionally equivalent to declined but isn't included in any statistics.