What a coverage map claims, and what it does not

A coverage map states, for each statement a course or credential references, whether that statement is taught, assessed, or both, with a weighting where it is assessed. That is all it states. It is not a quality judgement, and at Tier 0 it is not a judgement of ours at all.

Taught is a claim about the syllabus

A taught statement means the material covers it. Nobody has established that a learner holding the credential can do it. A course may legitimately teach a great deal that it does not assess — context, background, adjacent practice — and saying so is not a weakness in the map.

An assessed statement means an instrument exists, the learner passed it, and the map says which method was used. That is a claim about the person, not the syllabus, and it is the only kind of claim a credential can properly make.

Where the gap gets exploited

The pattern is a map with eighteen taught statements, three assessed, and marketing copy reading “covers eighteen framework competences”. Every element is true and the impression is false. This is why the word covered does not appear as a value in the schema: the two claims are separated at the level of the field, so that collapsing them requires writing something untrue rather than merely something vague.

The second pattern is exclusions listed without rationale. A statement in a referenced set that the course does not reach must appear with a reason. “Out of scope” is not a reason; it restates the exclusion. Say why it is out of scope, and the map becomes readable by someone deciding whether to buy the course.

What a reader should do with one

Read the assessed rows and the weightings first, and ignore the total count of referenced statements. Then read the exclusions. Then check that the framework version is pinned to a release rather than written as “latest”, because a map against a moving target cannot be verified by anyone, including its author.