Award-winning teacher recruitment agency, Valley Education Services (VES), is delighted to announce that it is the first company in Wales to have achieved the well-respected Compliance+ standard accreditation from the Association of Professional Staffing Company (APSco).
Compliance+ is a high-quality benchmark for education recruitment agencies across the UK. The standards required to achieve this accreditation are robust and go over and above the statutory safeguarding standards.
Agencies hoping for accreditation must aim for excellence in the selection of core skills and the quality of service being delivered. The standard is designed to benchmark recruitment firms against the highest service criteria and most importantly, safeguard the children who fall under the care of the recruited educators.
The accreditation standard has been warmly welcomed by many educational and professional bodies including the National Association of Head Teachers, the Associations of School and College Leaders and the National Associations of School Business Management, all of which were consulted during the development of Compliance+.
VES, a leading recruitment agency, was launched in 2009 in Merthyr Tydfil. As the business went from strength to strength, owner and managing director Sharon Green later opened further offices in Swansea and Bridgend to meet demand.
Offering a highly professional and personal service to clients, VES is the fastest growing teacher recruitment agency in Wales, which ensures that schools are provided with candidates who are suitably qualified and the best fit for their school.
The standards required to meet the Compliance+ accreditation involved an audit where every part of VES was scrutinised with a focus on three principal areas. The first area is safeguarding, where the standard seeks to ensure that statutory and best-practice requirements in safeguarding are properly implemented. Secondly, the competency requirements are analysed to ensure the firm is not only recruiting a safe candidate but also one with the best skills needed for the intended role. Finally, the company must adhere to the parameters of the audit, which takes place annually.
To remain accredited, a company must continue to uphold all standards of Compliance+. Only those achieving an audit score of 96% or more are awarded the accreditation. Managing director, Sharon Green, said: “I am thrilled that we have achieved this accreditation. I am especially proud of all the staff who collaborated and worked tirelessly to meet the high standards required of us.
“This accreditation forms a foundation on which we will continue to evolve and progress our services for the benefit of all of our stakeholders.”
Ann Swain, APSCo chief executive, commented: “APSCo is delighted to welcome Valley Education into its membership. All our members must commit to a strict code of conduct and a rigorous, independently verified, referencing process which means that APSCo is a trusted badge of quality for candidates and employers. “It’s not easy to become an APSCo member and the fact that Valley Education embraced this process shows its commitment to excellence.”
As the first education recruitment company in Wales to meet the criteria for accreditation, and only the seventh across the UK, VES has set a high standard to which others can aspire and will lead the way in this specialist area of recruitment.
