3.1 Who is this Guide for?

This 'Assessment Guide' has been produced in order to help two groups of people develop and deliver more effective teaching and training programmes in which the key skills of communication, application of number, IT, problem solving, working with others and Improving own learning and performance play a significant part. These two groups are:

Teachers and trainers; Trainers and employers.

The fact that the two groups are not mutually exclusive is highlighted by the presence of the 'trainers' in both categories. These two groups require accurate information about their students, trainees or employees. But there is a third group in the equation - the student, trainee, employee or the unemployed individual - and the situation or context in which they find themselves. They require equally important information about their achievement, strengths and weaknesses, in key skills. This information is usually expressed in the short hand term - a 'qualification'.

 

3.1 What sort of information do they require?

Teachers and trainers need to know the strengths and weaknesses of their students or trainees, especially as a means of planning the next stage of a course or programme, and to be able to 'plug the gaps' in a student's knowledge, understanding and skills. These are largely diagnostic and formative assessment.

Trainers are a little more specific in their demands of assessment. They, too, require information of a general nature, but are also often dealing with trainees who have job-specific needs, e.g. their employer is particularly interested in their developing IT skills or the ability to work with others. In such cases, the assessments must be firmly rooted in specific contexts. They also have to have systems in place that feed back to a wide range of employers.

These two groups of users are especially concerned that the assessments throw up results and information that tell the student what her/his strengths and weaknesses are

Employers also want to now if the claimed skills really have been achieved - and to have the evidence that this is true. So, the employer is interested in summative assessment supported by evidence.

The student, trainee, employee and the unemployed want to be certain that any programme or training course allows her/him to achieve the stated objectives and to have reliable evidence that it has been achieved. In other words, that a qualification is valid. They also need to know what they require to progress and, for example, to be eligible for promotion. Also important are those who are not currently working but who want to return to work or enter employment for the first time. In many cases they may have been outside the main stream of education or training for many years. This group will be especially keen to discover information about their current level of attainment, their strengths and weaknesses - that is, diagnostic assessment.

So, bearing in mind this very wide range of interest, are there any general principles of assessment that can be applied to educational and training programmes containing key skills?

 

3.3 Some basic assessment principles?
A possible list of principles that should underpin any key skills assessment programme would include the following:

Determine at the outset what information is required It is important that only the required information should be provided. So, careful attention needs to be paid to the form of the assessment. If the employer requires information about an employee's ability to use transferable key skills under pressure then the assessment must reflect this, e.g. a timed assessment. If on the other hand the ability to work co-operatively is the requirement, then group-based assessments must be developed and used. Initial assessment should result in each student/trainee receiving an individual action plan. Assessment must be a valid experience for the student/trainee/employee As far as possible, assessments must combine contextualised assessments (e.g. the task based upon a course or work activity with which the student/trainee is familiar) and those that provide the opportunity for the assessment of the transferable skills elements of key skills (e.g. encountering a problem in a novel situation). The assessment should provide information that is reliable The methods of assessment used by the teacher or trainer must produce results and information that can be depended upon by all involved in the process. That means that no matter who the person being assessed, or on when the assessment occurs, or by whom assessed, the result is the same. The results of the assessment should mean something to the users This has two meanings. The results should convey information that is readily understandable to the user, but they should also stand as a symbol for acceptability. Clearly, the UK government hopes to achieve both these aims through its new free-standing Key Skills Qualification. Certification should be manageable and cost effective It is no use developing an assessment programme that is too complicated for people to understand and too costly to use. Accordingly, the assessment techniques used should be capable of being used by trainers and understood by trainee and employer - and be cost effective.

 

3.4 Assessment - a method of working?

BUT, it is important to comment upon one important feature of the examples that are discussed. Because they are drawn from different countries they reflect different educational, social and political backgrounds. As a result, a particular assessment strategy will reflect this distinct background. Accordingly, it is important to consider the information provided in the composite diagrams in Section 2 - Setting the Scene to this Guide.

The remainder of this 'Guide' contains examples of different types of assessment. Sometimes a technique is used in one context and then, on another occasion, in another. One of the main purposes of the 'Guide' is to show how assessment may be used to give the trainee, the unemployed, the trainer and employer information about the individual's achievement, weaknesses and progress in the acquisition and the ability to use key skills. It is up to assessors to decide which assessment strategy and technique is most appropriate to their needs. The diagram below suggests a possible approach to and method of working in a key skills assessment programme.

A starting point
This is the teaching or training programme.
Decide how the 'key skills' are to be delivered:
by special key skills programmes, e.g. an IT course, an
Application of Number or Communication course.
Through a student/trainee's main courses or programme.

Assessment strategy
This largely depends upon the approach adopted to training: ·
If special key skills programmes are used then
assessment can focus on one or more key skill, e.g. on assessing communication.
If the approach to training is based on 'embedding' the
key skills within the main training programmes then each assessment
programme must consider the issue of the 'context' of the assessment, e.g.
a test designed to assess application of number skills is presented
within an exercise on, for example, health and safety, or welding techniques.

Assessment techniques
The type of tasks used largely depends on your assessment strategy.
For example, key skills focused programmes allow the use of
techniques that target aspects of a key skill directly (see Annex 2).
Contextualised key skills require the use of techniques that assess
the key skills indirectly, e.g. Annex 7.

back | top | next