This means that learning environments will be approved for any learner (except medical students), as long as the environment can demonstrate they:

• Have the appropriate Educator(s)
• Can cover the curriculum requirements of each learner
• Have sufficient capacity
• Meet quality standards set by Regulators and/or NHS England

The ULE process is a National Health Service England (NHSE) programme supported by our regulatory bodies GMC/NMC/HCPC. Organisations can apply for approval as a single provider, such as a GP Practice, or a multi-provider, such as a PCN or Federation.

Moving forward, the ULE process will be administrated by the ICS Training Hubs and reviews will take place in a virtual format. The National Education Contract is signed by the ICS Training Hub for primary care placements. The quality assurance of this process will be undertaken via the NHSE NW Primary Care School.

PARE (Practice Assessment Record & Evaluation) was developed by Health Education England (now part of NHS England) and the University of Chester. PARE will host a digital Learning Environment Approval Audit, automating a pre-agreed process for the approval of new Learning Environments across the region and delegating the various stages of the process to the correct stakeholders. PARE will also act as a database to host relevant information regarding NW GP Practices (for example whether they are currently a training practice or not) and NW Educators (for example showing which professionals they are approved to supervise at which practice). Having oversight of environments and supervisors enables the NW Primary Care School and wider stakeholders to identify capacity and thus help to increase the number of available learning environments across the North West.

The ULE functionality within PARE will show which environments have been audited by the NWPEG audit (via the Higher Educational Institutes and Training Hubs) and which environments have been audited via the new Unified Learning Environment (ULE) process. As of 10^th October 2023, all new environment approvals/audits in primary care will be reviewed and ratified in electronic format via the PARE system.

To prepare for the move to the ULE process and to PARE, the Primary Care School has completed a data cleansing exercise, a ULE pilot, and a beta test.

PLEASE NOTE the following:

• GP Practices only appear once on PARE and will be moved under a single organisation in PARE called ‘Primary Care School (North West)’
• Access will still be controlled – users will have access to specific placements, or relevant groups of placements, based on their access rights and the ‘tags’ being applied to each placement (PCN, Training Hub, PIVO and GP Training Programme)
• In instances where practices had multiple PR codes previously, these have now been amalgamated under one ODS code
• Existing PARE users will still (where applicable) be able to search on practice name to find placement information, however the ODS code can now also be used
• Information that was held in a separate area of PARE during the pilot and beta test phases will now be visible to all applicable users
• We have completed a thorough review of access rights for existing PARE users
• PARE FAQs were created – please find these attached – this includes information around how your account may differ moving forward and why some placements have been renamed and/or merged

If you have any queries regarding your access to, or placements on the PARE system, or regarding the ULE approval process, please contact your local Training Hub: [email protected]

See more information here:

• ULE Sway