Higher Education Institutions (HEI) Organizational PQAS Application

The Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), in working to establish collaborations across the varied systems that provide professional development to early childhood and school-age professionals in Pennsylvania, approves organizations where the organization offers a professional development approval and oversight system for instructors that is comparable to PQAS.

The Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System certifies instructors and organizations which provide professional development to early childhood and school-age professionals in Pennsylvania. The PQAS maintains a registry of approved instructors to help ensure that professional development activities meet quality standards.

Staff who are approved, can only provide professional development under the auspices of the approved organization for events that are available to the early childhood education community.

*NOTE: All practitioners in Pennsylvania must complete a 6-hour Health and Safety course specifically developed for Pennsylvania. Certification/Licensing staff in Pennsylvania are the only authorized trainers on specific regulatory information. Additional health and safety courses will be reviewed by the Pennsylvania Key to ensure regulatory topics or content are not referenced. Any health and safety courses approved in the PD Registry must have a disclaimer at the beginning of the course overview.

The disclaimer must include:

This course does not fulfill the required Pennsylvania 6-hour Pre-Service Health and Safety Training course.

Application Process:

• The review of the application will take up to 90 days once an application and all required documentation are received.
• The contact person on the application will be notified by email if additional items are needed.
• At the completion of the review process, the contact person will be notified by email indicating the status of the application.
• Approval is valid for five years.
• A renewal application will need to be submitted once an approval is expired.

Effective July 1, 2024, staff will not be individually approved under an organizational approval. Organization who are approved can manually list their instructors within the event. More details to follow upon approval.

Application and additional documentation should be submitted to pqas@pakeys.org.

Questions can be answered by calling (800) 284-6031 or sending a request to pqas@pakeys.org.

Organization Profile: Organizations must have a current Organization Profile with the PD Registry. The person who submits the application will need to create an organization profile to obtain an Org ID#, please follow the below steps to do so.

1. Log in at papdregistry.org.
2. Within the dropdown menu next to your name, select + Organization Profile.
3. Click Create Profile.
4. Complete the Contact Information section.
5. Answer NO for ‘Does this organization provide care and/or education to children?’
6. Organization Type: Professional Learning Organization.
7. Organization Address: Complete this section.
8. Click Submit.

Required Courses: The self-paced courses below are required for the person who submits the application AND the person who enters the courses/events. While reviewing your application, the PQAS team verifies this information in the Event Entry section. 

• The Pennsylvania Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators Course reviews an example of an approved E-Learning course and codes using the Professional Standards and Competencies for courses.  
• The Submitting PQAS Courses in the PD Registry Course provides directions on how to properly submit a course within the PD Registry. 

To register: 

1. Click Search Training Events (left-hand menu). 
2. Enter the appropriate Course Title. 
3. Click Search. 
4. Click Register and follow the prompts. 

To access/complete the course: 

1. Click on View All My Training to get to the course.  
2. Click on the blue box to the right of the course title to begin the course. If one does not appear click the course title to be taken to the course details where a link to the course will be provided. 

Items Needed for Review:

• Completion of Required Courses
• Application:
  • Organization Information
  • Representative Agreement