1. What this policy is for
People learn differently and carry different loads. Some read slowly, some read English as a third language, some froze in every exam hall they ever sat in, some are doing this at nine at night after a ten-hour shift. Our job is simple to state: nothing about the design of our training or assessment should get between a competent person and their qualification. This policy sets out how we act on that — as concrete design choices, not slogans.
2. Fairness we build in, for everyone
- Plain English. Content is written to be understood the first time. That is a courtesy to every learner — and a material difference for dyslexic readers and people working in a second language.
- Open book, where the real assessment is open book. The official assessments our training prepares for are open-book; so are our checks. We test whether you can find, understand and apply the rule — which is the actual job — not whether you can recite it under pressure.
- Adaptive by design. Experienced learners test out of what they can already demonstrate instead of sitting through it; anyone who needs more time on a topic gets it without penalty; retakes carry no shame and no fee. The format quietly removes the advantages exam technique usually buys.
- Works where you work. Training runs on a phone in a workshop, at home, in any gap in the day — no classroom, no travel, no time off, no reading aloud in front of anyone.
- The system doesn’t know who you are. Scoring uses your answers and nothing else. We do not collect demographic data from learners (see §5 for the one awarding-organisation exception), and the marking rules are the same deterministic rules for every person — the scoring has no information on which to discriminate and no discretion with which to do it.
3. Adjustments for individuals
If the standard format doesn’t work for you, tell us — legal@everyguard.uk — and a human will sort something out. Typical adjustments include more time, alternative formats, assistance with navigation, or a supported session with your manager or one of us. We would rather grant ten pragmatic adjustments than make one person fail for a reason that has nothing to do with competence. Where an awarding organisation’s reasonable-adjustment and special-consideration rules apply to a regulated assessment, we follow those rules and help you invoke them.
4. The law, briefly
We comply with the Equality Act 2010 across all nine protected characteristics, in employment and in service delivery, and this policy operates alongside our company-wide Equal Opportunities Policy. Harassment or victimisation of any learner — by our staff, our systems, or other users on our surfaces — is not tolerated, and reports are handled under our Complaints & Appeals Policy.
5. What we deliberately don’t do
- We don’t collect diversity monitoring data from learners for our own purposes. Our privacy posture is minimal data; we serve fairness by designing bias out of the process, not by building databases about protected characteristics. (One exception, which we’ll always tell you about: where an awarding organisation lawfully requires diversity monitoring for a regulated qualification, we collect the minimum it prescribes, pass it only to them, and use it for nothing else.)
- We don’t do quota theatre or performative statements. The measure of this policy is whether a capable person was blocked, not whether the document containing it sounded warm.
- We don’t use AI to classify learners demographically, infer characteristics, or vary treatment by anything other than their answers and their requests.
6. Accountability
The directors of Friam Limited own this policy. If you think we fell short of it — for you or for someone else — use the complaints route; equality complaints are acknowledged within 5 working days and answered within 14 days, and an upheld complaint changes the product, not just the reply.