Annual Quality Review - UK pre-registration physiotherapy education

The composite Annual Quality Review report forms a central component of the CSP’s quality assurance and enhancement arrangements.

The Annual Quality Review (AQR) Composite Report forms a central component of the CSP’s quality assurance and enhancement activity – as part of CSP’s role in accrediting pre-registration physiotherapy programmes.

The report utilises data acquired through CSP’s annual quality review of each CSP accredited pre-registration physiotherapy programme. It is produced as a by-product of this process but has proved invaluable to programme teams, allowing them to benchmark their programmes against the national profile of physiotherapy. 

The information is then made available to the public for transparency and demonstration the due scrutiny of the quality assurance and enhancement processes.

The report features a number of different datasets and draws out trends - everything from staffing levels, to how practice-based learning in diversifying and whether there is capacity locally, regionally and nationally it also provides a snapshot of the student profile. 

Each year the report also includes a quality enhancement theme, focusing on a key area pertinent to the physiotherapy pre-registration education, highlighting best practice and innovation. These themes vary but often look at how a topic is taught/brought to life within the curriculum. These topics have covered everything from public health, mental health, person-centred care, leadership, digital health or cultural competence. They have also focussed on wider concerns such as how the profession continues to diversify – whether that’s providing students with opportunities to experience the full breadth of the profession through contemporary placements, or looking at student cohorts themselves – how diverse and reflective of the population’s demographics they themselves are. 

By looking across a number of these reports, users will get a sense of how the profession is developing and what is being taught to our future physiotherapists.

For those interested in the quality assurance and enhancement activity processes more generally – CSP’s accreditation activity enables the CSP to monitor, assess, challenge and enhance the quality of pre-registration programmes – individually and collectively. This outcome of this activity does not feature within this composite AQR report, but rather, the activity reports formally to the Quality Assurance and Enhancement Network, Professional Committee and ultimately Council. While we do not report it here, data found within the report is central to CSP’s ability to help teams to continually improve and enhance their programmes. Student profile data for example helps to inform the ongoing discussions about how best to widen access and diversify the profession for example. Information around resources helps to ensure that staff workload is manageable leading to a positive impact on student experience etc. 

Should you wish to know more about this activity, please refer to our pages about CSP accreditation and the accreditation process or contact the CSP Education team at (education@csp.org.uk).