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Guide: How to Achieve your Assessor Qualification

Guides and FAQsHow to Achieve your Assessor Qualification

This information is provided in good faith and in summary form. Please feel free to contact us directly for further guidance.

You may now be fully aware that there are 4 assessor qualifications so firstly, identify which of the four current assessor qualifications you need – refer to this link for information.

Each of the four qualifications are explained below in terms of how you achieve them, what must be in place in order to achieve them and what the accredited centre must do to ensure that you are correctly supported and assessed.

In this page:

Level 3 Award in Understanding the Principles and Practices of Assessment

This qualification is a single Unit and is about your knowledge and understanding only; there is no assessment of your competence as an assessors within this award just the assessment of what you know and understand.

To achieve this qualification, you ought to go through some training in order to understand what assessment is about, etc. and you would then provide evidence in the form of a completed document or professional discussion, depending upon your needs, providing complete answers to each of the criteria of the Unit.

Arrow - TopSee further Evidence Guidance below.

Level 3 Award in Assessing Vocationally Related Achievement

This qualification about your knowledge, understanding AND your competence (performance) as an assessor. It is made up of two Units, one knowledge Unit and one performance Unit.

You will need to undergo some training, usually two-days followed by some ‘putting the learning into practice’, and then you will meet each Unit as follows:

To achieve the knowledge Unit, you will provide evidence in the form of a completed document or professional discussion, depending upon your needs, providing complete answers to each of the criteria of the Unit. Some evidence to support this knowledge Unit may come from your evidence for the performance Unit.

To achieve the performance Unit, the standards REQUIRE that you are OBSERVED assessing REAL candidates. The methods for assessment that you use for this Unit are: Assessment in simulated environments, Skills Tests, Oral and Written Questions, Assignments, Projects, Case Studies, Recognising Prior Learning. The observation of you assessing CANNOT take place via Skype, Video Recording, etc., your assessor must be there in person, observing you directly.

The standards also REQUIRE that you assess a minimum of 2 candidates and with a minimum of 4 activities being assessed across the 2 candidates, i.e. two assessed activities with one candidate and two assessed activities with the other candidate.

You could assess 4 candidates with a single activity being assessed for each candidate however, the minimum number of activities that you must assess is four and the minimum number of candidates to be assessed is two.

The nature of what this assessor qualification is about means that it is highly likely that you may be assessing all of you candidates at the same time, i.e. if you were running an exam (written questions), etc..

You will need to generate physical evidence to support the observations such

You will also need to show involvement within ‘standardisation activities’, i.e. that you have evidence that you have attended assessor and quality assurance meetings, therefore, you will need to be able to work with either and awarding centre or an organisation operating in-house standards.

Arrow - TopSee further Evidence Guidance below.

Level 3 Award in Assessing Competence in the Work Environment

This qualification about your knowledge, understanding AND your competence (performance) as an assessor. It is made up of two Units, one knowledge Unit and one performance Unit.

You will need to undergo some training, usually two-days followed by some ‘putting the learning into practice’, and then you will meet each Unit as follows:

To achieve the knowledge Unit, you will provide evidence in the form of a completed document or professional discussion, depending upon your needs, providing complete answers to each of the criteria of the Unit. Some evidence to support this knowledge Unit may come from your evidence for the performance Unit.

To achieve the first performance Unit, the standards REQUIRE that you are OBSERVED assessing REAL candidates. The methods for assessment that you use for this Unit are: Assessment in simulated environments, Skills Tests, Oral and Written Questions, Assignments, Projects, Case Studies, Recognising Prior Learning. The observation of you assessing CANNOT take place via Skype, Video Recording, etc., your assessor must be there in person, observing you directly.

The standards also REQUIRE that you assess a minimum of 2 candidates and with a minimum of 4 activities being assessed across the 2 candidates, i.e. two assessed activities with one candidate and two assessed activities with the other candidate.

You could assess 4 candidates with a single activity being assessed for each candidate however, the minimum number of activities that you must assess is four and the minimum number of candidates to be assessed is two.

The nature of what this assessor qualification is about means that it is highly likely that you may be assessing all of you candidates at the same time, i.e. if you were running an exam (written questions), etc..

To achieve the second performance Unit, the standards REQUIRE that you are OBSERVED assessing REAL candidates. The methods for assessment that you use for this Unit are: Observation in the work environment, examining products of work, questioning the learner, discussing with the learner, use of others (witness testimony), looking at learner statements, recognising prior learning The observation of you assessing CANNOT take place via Skype, Video Recording, etc., your assessor must be there in person, observing you directly.

The standards also REQUIRE that you assess a minimum of 2 candidates and with a minimum of 4 activities being assessed across the 2 candidates, i.e. two assessed activities with one candidate and two assessed activities with the other candidate.

You could assess 4 candidates with a single activity being assessed for each candidate however, the minimum number of activities that you must assess is four and the minimum number of candidates to be assessed is two.

Note: Across the two performance Units this means that you will work with a minimum of 4 candidate assessing a minimum of 8 activities.

You will need to generate physical evidence to support the observations such

You will also need to show involvement within ‘standardisation activities’, i.e. that you have evidence that you have attended assessor and quality assurance meetings, therefore, you will need to be able to work with either and awarding centre or an organisation operating in-house standards.

Arrow - TopSee further Evidence Guidance below.

Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement

This qualification about your knowledge, understanding AND your competence (performance) as an assessor. It is made up of three Units, one knowledge Unit and two performance Units.

You will need to undergo some training, usually two-days followed by some ‘putting the learning into practice’, and then you will meet each Unit as follows:

To achieve the knowledge Unit, you will provide evidence in the form of a completed document or professional discussion, depending upon your needs, providing complete answers to each of the criteria of the Unit. Some evidence to support this knowledge Unit may come from your evidence for the performance Unit.

To achieve the first performance Unit, the standards REQUIRE that you are OBSERVED assessing REAL candidates. The methods for assessment that you use for this Unit are: Observation in the work environment, examining products of work, questioning the learner, discussing with the learner, use of others (witness testimony), looking at learner statements, recognising prior learning The observation of you assessing CANNOT take place via Skype, Video Recording, etc., your assessor must be there in person, observing you directly.

The standards also REQUIRE that you assess a minimum of 2 candidates and with a minimum of 4 activities being assessed across the 2 candidates, i.e. two assessed activities with one candidate and two assessed activities with the other candidate.

You could assess 4 candidates with a single activity being assessed for each candidate however, the minimum number of activities that you must assess is four and the minimum number of candidates to be assessed is two.

You will need to generate physical evidence to support the observations such

You will also need to show involvement within ‘standardisation activities’, i.e. that you have evidence that you have attended assessor and quality assurance meetings, therefore, you will need to be able to work with either and awarding centre or an organisation operating in-house standards.

Arrow - TopSee further Evidence Guidance below.

How should you be supported by your Awarding Centre and Assessor

You should have access to a named assessor who will provide you guidance and support throughout.

Your Assessor must ensure that you:

  • Are properly introduced to the standards via an Induction;
  • Understand the appeals procedure should you disagree with your assessor’s decision.
  • Understands the methods of assessment;
  • Are given guidance (in the form of Assessment Plans) regarding what you need to do;
  • Understand the methods of assessment and what you need to do;
  • Are assessed for performance and knowledge requirements;
  • Are given feedback as soon after an assessment as possible;

Your Assessor must also:

  • Make sure that the standard, the whole standard and nothing but the standard is used to make the assessment decision;
  • Ensure that records are accurately completed;
  • Take part in standardisation activities with other Assessors;
  • Demonstrate Continuous Professional Development themselves;

It is not the responsibility of the Assessor to produce the portfolio of evidence; that is down to you!

Awarding centres should have an internal quality assurance system to make sure that assessment decisions are sound and that all assessors are following the assessment strategy for the qualification.

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Further Evidence Guidance

Assessor qualifications are available from a number of different awarding bodies however, the standards are the same whichever awarding body’s badge is on the certificate.

Our experience is that the explanation of evidence required to meet the standards (evidence guidance) is varied from awarding body to awarding body and in some cases, seems to be lacking.

However, City & Guilds have produce some decent explanations and the links below take you to the appropriate PDF document for each of the three Unit. You should pay attention to the columns on the right of the pages as these give guidance on what the evidence should look like.

Please note that the Unit numbers are City & Guilds and these numbers may vary from awarding body to awarding body.

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