Head of Learning Compliance

Role purpose

The Head of Learning Compliance is responsible for protecting the school’s regulatory standing across all relevant external education, accreditation, examination, and certification bodies.

This role provides leadership across external regulatory liaison, accreditation and registration compliance, learner and assessment entry compliance, certification governance, regulatory interpretation, and audit readiness. The role ensures that external requirements are translated into clear internal rules, processes, decision pathways, and delivery plans so that the school remains compliant, evidence-ready, and able to respond effectively to regulatory change.

The role acts as the school’s central point of coordination for learning compliance matters with external bodies. It is responsible not only for maintaining compliance in steady-state operations, but also for leading rapid, well-coordinated institutional responses when regulators or awarding bodies introduce late-breaking requests, changes, exceptions, or clarifications. This role owns institutional compliance risk, regulatory interpretation, and the systems required to ensure compliant delivery of all regulated learning activities.

Key outcomes

Regulatory Integrity & Standing

• Good Standing: The organisation maintains strong reputation and active accreditation with all relevant regulatory, examination, and certification bodies, with no material compliance breaches.
• Audit-Ready Infrastructure: Policies, controls, and evidence trails are consistently current and robust enough to withstand any external review or regulatory scrutiny.

Execution Excellence

• Cycle Accuracy: All learner registrations, assessment entries, and moderation submissions are processed with near-zero error rates and within required timelines.
• Deadline Security: All accreditation renewals and external submission deadlines are met, with no avoidable institutional risk.
• Certification Flow: A seamless certification process from achievement to delivery, ensuring no backlogs for learners.

Operational Clarity & Visibility

• Requirement Translation: Regulatory complexity is successfully simplified into clear internal decision paths and operational "rules of the road" for the business.
• Leadership Visibility: Senior leadership has real-time visibility into compliance risks, deadlines, and dependencies through active tracking and reporting.

Risk & Disruption Management

• Resilience: Regulator-driven disruptions are anticipated and managed with a coordinated response that minimizes knock-on effects across other departments.
• Informed Stakeholders: Internal teams are fully equipped and trained to meet the documentation and evidence standards required for regulated activity.

Key responsibilities

1. Strategic Stewardship & Governance

• External Liaison: Serve as the primary official contact for bodies including Umalusi, SACAI, the DBE, QCTO, and SETAs.
• Regulatory Interpretation: Own the "point-of-truth" for interpreting external regulations; define internal decision-rights, approval thresholds, and escalation routes for ambiguous requirements.
• Policy & AI Governance: Develop and maintain educational governance policies, including frameworks for the compliant use of AI in assessments and proctoring.
• Risk Calibration: Partner with business leaders to balance regulatory requirements with commercial objectives, defining the institution’s practical risk appetite.

2. Compliance Operations & Lifecycle Management

• Accreditation & Registration: Lead the end-to-end application and renewal processes for institutional accreditation and registration.
• Learner Journey Compliance:
  Ensure systems, controls, and ownership are in place to deliver accurate and timely learner registrations (e.g., NSC, EISA), assessment entries, and moderation submissions.
• Certification Oversight: Track the certificate lifecycle from learner achievement to final delivery, ensuring zero backlogs with external councils.
• Audit Readiness: Define and maintain auditable records, evidence trails, and documentation standards required for external monitoring and SETA/QCTO audits.

3. Visibility & Disruption Management

• Compliance Dashboarding: Maintain real-time trackers for risks, deadlines, and accreditation status to provide leadership visibility.
• Rapid Response: Lead the institutional response to late-breaking regulator requests or disruptions, minimizing knock-on effects across teams.
• Knowledge Continuity: Ensure compliance calendars and critical operating knowledge survive staff transitions, restructures, or role handovers.

4. Capacity Building & Culture

• Internal Training: Build internal understanding of documentation and quality assurance requirements through workshops and guidance.
• Culture of Discipline: Promote a proactive culture of accuracy and regulatory preparedness across all teaching and administrative teams

Measures of success

• No material lapses in institutional accreditation, registration, or regulatory standing.
• External submissions, learner registrations, moderation requirements, and certification processes completed accurately and on time.
• Clean or improved outcomes from audits, reviews, monitoring engagements, and moderation interactions.
• Clear and timely internal action plans produced in response to external regulatory changes or urgent requests.
• Compliance risks, dependencies, and deadlines are visible and actively managed.
• Reduced avoidable rework and escalation caused by regulator-driven late changes.
• Policies, decision rules, and evidence trails remain current and are readily available for review.
• Internal stakeholders demonstrate improved compliance understanding and stronger documentation discipline

Stakeholder interface

Internal

• Heads of Departments
• Executive team
• Teaching staff and vocational trainers
• Assessment and operations teams
• Student administration and records teams
• Product, systems, and data teams where relevant
• Legal, governance, or people teams where relevant

External

• Regulatory and accreditation bodies
• Examination and certification authorities
• Government departments and relevant agencies
• Industry or sector bodies, committees, and forums where applicable

Required experience

• A degree in law, education, risk management or related field.
• 8 - 10 years experience in education compliance, accreditation, quality assurance, assessment governance, examinations administration, or a related field.
• Strong demonstrable experience working with external regulatory, accreditation, or awarding bodies.
• Experience managing learner registration, assessment-entry, moderation, certification, or related compliance processes in a regulated environment.
• Experience developing and implementing policies, processes, controls, and evidence requirements in a regulated environment.
• Experience managing readiness for audit, review, moderation, or external monitoring.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional responses across multiple internal stakeholders to ensure timely and accurate submissions and regulatory responses.
• Experience handling complex or late-breaking regulator-driven issues under deadline pressure.

Knowledge and skills

Regulatory Expertise

• Deep Subject Matter Expertise: Comprehensive understanding of the South African education landscape, including regulatory, accreditation, examination, and certification environments.
• Regulatory Network: Proven history of working directly with key bodies such as Umalusi, DHET, QCTO, SACAI, and SETAs (strongly preferred).
• Systems Proficiency: High confidence in utilizing reporting tools, trackers, logs, and digital compliance documentation systems.

Strategic Interpretation

• Policy Translation: Advanced capability to interpret complex external policies and convert them into clear, actionable internal decision rules and protocols.
• Balanced Judgement: Skill in identifying compliance risks and ambiguities, with the ability to weigh these against commercial and operational needs to find pragmatic solutions.
• Escalation Logic: Precision in identifying when a compliance risk requires executive intervention or formal escalation.

Operational Excellence

• Lifecycle Management: Expert planning, coordination, and follow-through across high-stakes, time-sensitive compliance and examination cycles.
• Documentary Integrity: Meticulous attention to detail and a commitment to the highest standards of accuracy in all regulatory records.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Ability to orchestrate responses across different departments (Academics, Ops, IT) without needing to own every individual task.

Communication & Influence

• Stakeholder Credibility: Ability to build immediate trust and professional rapport with both internal teams and external regulatory officials.
• Clarity of Communication: High-level written and verbal skills, capable of explaining complex regulatory requirements to non-specialists.

Personal attributes

• Highly organised and dependable.
• Calm under pressure and able to manage deadline-driven regulatory requirements.
• Proactive in identifying risks and strengthening compliance discipline.
• Clear, pragmatic, and steady in high-pressure situations.
• Collaborative and credible across internal and external stakeholders.
• Comfortable making structured judgements where regulations are ambiguous or evolving.