The Permaculture Association

Certa Accreditation:

Application Form

Use this form to become a centre in the Permaculture Association’s Distributed College OCN Scheme (DCOS) with Certa to add external accreditation to your permaculture design course programmes, joining a growing network of providers showing how permaculture learning can lead to progression in the UK’s mainstream education systems.

Your group or course team

Your Name:
Project / Group / Company Name:
Your role in relation to this application:
Postal Address:
Postcode:
Tel:
Email: Web:
Contact Details for the Registered Tutor/Courses Convenor (if different):
Address:
Postcode:
Tel:
Email: Web:
Please confirm the following by writing ‘yes’ or ‘no’ against the statements:
  • I am (or if a group member, we are) a current member of the Permaculture Association.
  • The person named as the main tutor is on the Permaculture Association’s Register of Tutors.
  • Of the main course leader/registered tutor/course convenor ______
    (add names/s) has held a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, since (add date/s)
  • Of the people named above ______has a recognised teaching and/or assessment qualification related to working in a state, private or lifelong learning education context.

Your current courses Please tell us about your course provision.

How long have you been teaching about Permaculture and/or running Permaculture design courses?
How long have you been running the Permaculture Design ’72 hour certificate’ course?
How many times have you run this course, and how many people have you accredited through the Permaculture Association?
Which other courses do you run?
Again, how many times have you run this course/these courses, and how many people have you taken through them?
Have any of your courses been accredited by other bodies, such as awarding bodies (NOCN, City & Guilds, maybe a local university), or horticultural, construction, community based agencies etc?
Please briefly describe any other teaching/convening/mentoring projects you/the group has been involved with, that might be of interest to this application.

Information about the courses for external accreditation

Please tell us your reasons for wanting to add external accreditation to your courses
Have you or any of your team been involved with the Open College Network or any other credit-based awarding bodies?
At the moment the Permaculture Association have three courses that can be accredited through Certa. Please indicate which ones you want to offer by writing ‘yes’ or ‘no’ against each one.
  • The Permaculture Design Course (12 credits at Level 3 / Level 2)

  • Introduction to Permaculture Design (3 credits at Level 2 / Level 1)

  • Practical Permaculture (3 credits at Level 2/1)

When do you want to start running the accredited course/s ? date / month / year
Are there any other courses you might want to accredit through Certa?
Please indicate which areas you might want to look at offering as externally-accredited courses
Advice & information for jobs & education / Finance, local economies
Animal husbandry / Food production
Appropriate technology and ICT / Forestry/woodlands, Wildlife conservation
Arts & crafts / Horticulture, gardening, agriculture
Aquaculture, water conservation / Health & welfare
Architecture, construction, green building, / Recycling/Reduce/reuse
Biodiversity promotion / Site design & development, housing,
Community development / Research
Design consultancy / Media and publishing
Education & Training / Strategic development
Energy conservation & production / Functional Skills / Skills for Life

The Permaculture Association.

Charity No: 1116699, Company No: 0590819

Address: BCM Permaculture Association, London, WC1N 3XX.

Email: Tel: (0)845 4581805 /(0)113 2307461Web:

More about your group or course team’s experience and qualifications to manage, teach and assess credit-based units and their learning outcomes.

Taking on running an Certa-accredited course, whether it’s publicly funded or not, means getting involved with a formal system of educational assessment and record-keeping, as much as it’s about the enjoyment of teaching perm culture design and observing people learning from your course. The Permaculture Association is the Certa Accredited Centre, and its Registered Tutors are part of the distributed college for permaculture design education (DCOS). Although the Permaculture Association has no operational management over what you are teaching, you will be acting as a Registered Tutor and/or a Registered Assessor for the Permaculture Association’s OCN provision. This means you need to follow the ‘rules and regulations’ set out by OCNHYR; ultimately this is regulated by Ofqual.

So below, please answer the questions that will help the Permaculture Association consider your application to be OCN Tutors and Assessors. You should be able to extend the box by simply typing into it.

Your Course Team

Please give the names of people in your course team, and tell us something about their Permaculture design qualifications and experience:

Name / When PDC was achieved & where / Status re Diploma (ie. Diploma holder since (date), Diploma Apprentice since (date), etc. / Which course/s they teach on, or their role in the team, such as administrator, etc. / How long teaching the course/s / What formal teaching or assessment awards held & since when eg. QTS (qualified teacher status), PTLLS, C&G 7307 or 7407, TDLB assessor awards (D or A or V units), university lecturer, etc.
We will need to see original certificates for these awards.

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The support you need to work as an OCN centre on behalf of the Permaculture Association

You will probably have some questions relating to all or any of the above sections so the Permaculture Association would like to know how you think we can support you.

What skills and resources does your group need to develop or acquire to be a Permaculture Association distributed college for externally-accredited Permaculture design education?
What developments do you have planned for the future that might affect your role in and contribution to this externally-accreditation provision?
Can you offer any skills and/or resources to other tutors and groups in this venture?

APPLICATION DECLARATION TO BE SIGNED BY COURSE LEADER/PROPOSER

This part of the form needs to be signed by the main contact person and Registered Tutor involved in your course provision. Please can you send the form to: OCN Accreditation, BCM Permaculture Association, London, WC1N 3XX.

Please make sure that everyone involved in the planning and running of your accreditation has read through the essential requirements in the Permaculture Association DCOS Handbook. This way everyone in your project will have a shared understanding of what the accreditation means, and how it has to operate.

Please contact the office if there is anything that is not clear to you, or you feel needs to be explained in more detail.

What we will do for you:

  • Process your application promptly.
  • Ask one of our Internal Verifiers to contact you to discuss together how to support the accreditation.
  • Provide ongoing support via the Permaculture Association's office, which can help with day to day issues, and put you in touch with other support that we cannot provide.
  • Provide information, registration and assessment paperwork, and web-based facilities for support.
  • Provide Education Group and Convergence-based meetings where you can share your skills and knowledge with the network as a whole, and receive specific training.

We, the project applying to be a distributed college centre for the Permaculture Association and Certa agree to:

  • Meet the requirements of Certa in terms of acquiring and updating formal qualifications to tutor and assess in the relevant sector, at our own expense.
  • Meet Certa requirements to register learners promptly and accurately, and keep secure records of assessment decisions, samples of portfolios etc., and making them available to Certa representatives if needed.
  • Make prompt payments with regards to (a) becoming a member of the Permaculture Association distributed college OCN accreditation scheme, and (b) covering the costs of registration, certification and verification of our learners, within twenty-one (21) days of the date of the invoices sent by Permaculture Association. We understand that there is an annual charge covering DCOS membership, quality assurance, and system development. We understand that there will also be a variable charge depending on the number of learners we register, the number of credits claimed, and the costs of internal verification for certification.
  • Use permaculture ethics and principles to develop and maintain our teaching provision, and share this with other tutors in the context of CPD for this scheme.
  • Tell the Permaculture Association if our project runs into difficulties so that they can provide extra support.
  • Agree to the information on this application being stored electronically, and made available to the internal verifier team via the office, and to Certa as required.

1. Print Name:Signed:Date: / /

2. Print Name:Signed:Date: / /

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