Standards for student supervision and assessment

Please note our new standards may be used from
28 January 2019. Helpful FAQs can be found at the bottom of this page but if you can’t find what you’re looking for, feel free to email us.

Our new Standards for student supervision and assessment (Cymraeg) set out our expectations for the learning, support and supervision of students in the practice environment. They also set out how students are assessed for theory and practice learning.

Why these standards matter

These standards aim to give approved education institutions (AEIs) and practice learning partners, the flexibility to develop creative approaches to education while still being accountable for the local delivery and management of approved programmes in line with our standards.

The student journey

The structure of the standards follow the student journey:

Effective practice learning
Find out what needs to be in place to deliver safe and effective learning experiences for nursing and midwifery students in practice.

Supervision of students
Read about the principles of student supervision in the practice environment and the role of the practice supervisor.

Assessment of students and confirmation of proficiency
Understand what we require from educators who are assessing and confirming students’ practice and academic achievement. In this section we also describe the roles of the practice assessor and academic assessor.

This document is available in a print friendly version (Cymraeg).

Using the standards

It's important to read these standards along with the other parts of Realising professionalism: Standards for education and training:

• Part 1: Standards framework for nursing and midwifery education
• Part 3: programme standards for the course that is being delivered
• the relevant standards of proficiency.

So for nursing that would be Future nurse: Standards of proficiency for registered nurses and Standards for pre-registration nursing programmes.

Reading them together provides a complete picture of:

• what nurses and midwives need to know and be able to do, by the time they register with us
• our expectations of universities and their practice learning partners for delivering NMC-approved programmes for nurses and midwives.

Supporting information on the Standards for student supervision and assessment

We're also developing some supporting information for the new standards for student supervision and assessment.

This supporting information is there to help with the implementation of our new standards, and relates to all standards that deal with student supervision and assessment across all our new standards documents. It will contain examples of how our standards may be implemented. It's not a series of standards that must be met.

On these pages you will find information relating to the new practice supervisor role and practice supervision. Information on the practice assessor and the academic assessor is currently in development and will be provided in the coming months.

How these standards were developed

For the past two years we have been developing these standards with input from stakeholders across the UK. We put our proposals to consultation in summer 2017 and listened closely to the feedback we received. Find out more about how the standards were developed.