Turning the AQF Pledge into practice. Without the panic.
There’s a particular kind of silence that falls in a room when someone says the word “audit”. It’s the sound of people mentally scanning shared drives, inboxes, and crumpled post-it notes, hoping what’s needed already exists — or at least looks like it does.
It’s easy to assume your agent processes are working… until someone asks to see them.
The UK’s Agent Quality Framework (AQF) is the sector’s collective effort to raise the bar on how we work with agents, improve the student experience and demonstrate we’re not asleep at the wheel when it comes to ensuring students get the best possible service from our education agents.
Hundreds of UK institutions have already signed the AQF Pledge. This pledge is more than a warm, fuzzy best-practice wish list. It is fast becoming part of the UKVI Sponsor requirements and institutions are going to need to show their work.
If you have signed the pledge and are wondering what your next steps are to ensure you honour your commitments, here’s some tips on what you can do.
🛠️ DIY AQF review
1️⃣ Remind yourself of your commitments against the four pillars of the pledge:
- Empowering Student Choice and Enabling Informed Decision Making
- Ensuring Good Agent Governance and Professionalism
- Promoting Ethical Agent Practices, Professional Knowledge and Competency
- Increasing Transparency and Accountability
2️⃣ Create a progress sheet (a simple excel sheet will do) to record which actions you feel you have in place already, which are ‘in progress’ and which are ‘still to do’.
3️⃣ Review your activities against the ‘recommended actions and best practices to achieve the agreed commitments’ for each pillar.
4️⃣ Record evidence to demonstrate your actions that meet the commitments (in case the auditors ask to see it). This could involve:
- Links to policies and process documents
- Links to web content
- Copies of email communications
- Meeting notes
- Internal reports
5️⃣ Develop a plan to ensure that your ‘in progress’ and ‘still to do’ actions are implemented. Agree on who will be responsible for completing the actions and by when. Set a date to check-in on progress.
6️⃣ Regularly review your actions and commitments. We recommend doing this every two years.
⁉️ Not sure where to begin
Need some independent expert advice? That’s where Edified comes in.
Our AQF Audit and Success Plan or a more comprehensive Agent Management Appraisal will help make sure your operations are audit-ready and built to last.
We take an in-depth look at your documentation, systems, communications, training, governance – the whole agent management ecosystem – and map it against your AQF Pledge commitments.
We’re not just ticking boxes. We’re spotlighting what’s working, what needs tightening and where the risk (or opportunity) lies. Good systems aren’t for the auditors, they’re for you. Helping your team do better work, with less stress, and deliver an outstanding international student experience.
Read on to learn about how Edified helped INTO University Partnerships move from “we think we’re compliant” to “we know we’re compliant”.
✅ A case study on agent management best practice at INTO
Client challenge
With the AQF pledge becoming a priority action for the sector in the UK, INTO University Partnerships wanted an independent assessment to confirm that their agent management processes were compliant and met all the pledge commitments across their global agent network. INTO wanted to evidence those good practices to maximise their difference in the sector and bring further confidence to their university partners.
Edified’s approach
Building on our experience in researching and assisting to create the UK’s Agent Quality Framework (alongside BUILA, The British Council and UKCISA) we offered INTO an AQF Pledge Compliance Audit and Success Plan. This involved:
- Presenting to a cross-functional group at INTO about the AQF pledge framework, why it is important and why we would be conducting the audit.
- Demonstrating how we would assess their processes and procedures to make sure they meet the required standards and to identify how INTO could go beyond the compliance requirements and towards world’s best practice.
- Running a co-creation workshop to develop a roadmap to execution. The roadmap included 62 areas of improvement, INTO then spent nine months ensuring these areas were covered and evidenced.
- Conducting a rigorous audit of INTO’s organisation-wide agent management operations covering the 17 commitments contained within the AQF Pledge.
- Assessing the attributes that would take INTO beyond the core requirements of the AQF Pledge and towards what we, based on our global experience, consider to be world’s best practice.
Impact
We were delighted to confirm that INTO Global passed our compliance audit with just two areas requiring action. We also found INTO had demonstrated 34 examples of global best practice.
This best practice has strengthened INTO’s relationships with its global agent network and enhanced confidence and assurance for its university partners. Most importantly, it contributes to a consistently excellent international student experience through transparent, ethical, and supportive recruitment practices.
Ready or not?
Whether your agent management strategy is a well-oiled machine or tucked away in a folder called “AGENT STUFF – FINAL v4,” now is the time to get ahead of the curve.
Edified’s AQF Audit and Success Plan is designed with minimal resource impact in mind. No marathon workshops, no 300-page reports written in legalese. Just clear advice from people who’ve walked in your shoes and helped build this framework from the ground up.
Get in touch to discuss your needs and find out how Edified can help your institution.
Chris Davis
Director, UK and Europe
