Apply for Qualified Teacher Status in England - Application Forms

The lifecycle of an application follows the stages below. The status updater calculates its stage and statuses from the assessment, outstanding requests and final outcome.

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 go through some pre-assessment tasks if it requires preliminary checks or prioritisation checks.

Preliminary checks

An application will go through preliminary checks only if requires_preliminary_check is set to true (which itself comes from the region).

These checks requires the assessor to perform a preliminary check against some basic pieces of information and either pass this stage or decline the application.

Prioritisation checks

An application will go through prioritisation checks only if the application has any work history that is in England which has either ended in the last 12 months of them submitting their application or they currently work there.

This step assessors go through:

1. Check on the specific work history roles to ensure they are eligible for prioritision. These failure reasons represent why a role might not be eligible for prioritisation.
2. Eligible roles then have references sent out to confirm the applicant works there.
3. Final decision on prioritisation.

If an application has been determined by the system to go through prioritisation checks, any preliminary checks, if relevant, will no longer be required unless prioritisation checks do not pass due to not being eligible roles for prioritisation. The need for any preliminary checks is removed at this stage since subject restrictions which apply to specific countries and regions no longer apply.

Once an application is prioritised, it will have prioritised column set to true on the assessments table which can be used later on by assessors to identify prioritised applications.

Awaiting letter of professional standing (LoPS)

An application will await LoPS if teaching_authority_provides_written_statement is set to true (which itself comes from the region).

This step requires the assessor to wait for the letter of professional standing to be received from the teaching authority and then mark it as received in order to start the assessment stage.

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.

We may add or remove available checks and failure reasons as assessment requirements evolve. These changes apply to newly submitted applications; existing assessments retain the checks and failure reasons saved at submission.

On rare occasions, these additions or removals may also need to be reflected in existing submitted applications. Avoid doing this unless absolutely necessary, to preserve consistency in how applications are assessed. The sync procedure only updates non-preliminary sections for applications in pre-assessment or whose assessment has not started; it does not update assessments already in progress or beyond that stage. See Assessment section failure reason updates for the procedure and its safeguards.

Further information requests

Sometimes there is missing information in the original application. Once the failure reasons have been selected and the assessor submits the initial assessment, the initial request service performs these steps:

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

After reviewing a response, the assessor can request further information on outstanding items using the follow-up request service. This creates a separate request rather than replacing the original request.

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)

Review stage

The application enters the review stage when its assessment has a review recommendation. Assessors review the verification evidence before a final decision.

An application also remains in this stage while a TRSTRNRequest is being resolved through TRS. Its status is awarded_pending_checks, or potential_duplicate_in_dqt if a potential duplicate has been identified. Despite the legacy status name, this handoff uses TRS.

Completed stage

An application finishes with three possible states:

Awarded

An award recommendation is not itself a completed award. The application enters the completed stage with an awarded status once awarded_at is set.

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.

A declined application can also have the received_decision_review status when a decision-review request for the current decline has been received but not yet reviewed. It remains in the completed stage during that review.

Withdrawn

A withdrawn application has a separate withdrawn status and remains in the completed stage. It is not recorded as declined.