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The RTO implements an assessment system that ensures that assessment (including recognition of prior learning): The individual learner’s needs are considered in the assessment process. Where appropriate, reasonable adjustments are applied by the RTO to take into account the individual learner’s needs. The RTO informs the learner about the assessment process, and provides the learner with the opportunity to challenge the result of the assessment and be reassessed if necessary. Any assessment decision of the RTO is justified, based on the evidence of performance of the individual learner. Validity requires: The RTO implements a plan for ongoing systematic validation of assessment practices and judgements that includes for each training product on the RTO’s scope of registration: For the purposes of clause 1.9, each training product is validated at least once every five years, with at least 50 per cent of products validated within the first three years of each five year cycle, taking into account the relative risks of all of the training products on the RTO’s scope of registration, including those risks identified by the VET regulator. For the purposes of clause 1.9, systematic validation of an RTO’s assessment practices and judgements is undertaken by one or more persons who are not directly involved in the particular instance of delivery and assessment of the training product being validated, and who collectively have: Industry experts may be involved in validation to ensure there is the combination of expertise set out in a) or b) above. The RTO offers recognition of prior learning to individual learners.
The Standards ensure graduates meet industry expectations as expressed in training packages and VET accredited courses. The Standards require providers to deliver training and assessment that allows students both the opportunity and the time to develop their skills and knowledge—and to practice and demonstrate their skills in a holistic and meaningful way. Your RTO must develop and implement a system to ensure:
An assessment system includes not only the actual materials used directly in conducting assessment, but also policies, procedures and other supporting documents and tools that inform the way assessment is conducted within your RTO. For a student to be assessed as competent, your RTO must ensure the student has:
A student must:
Through the above process, the student must demonstrate they hold all of the required skills and knowledge specified in the unit or module assessment requirements. When developing assessment materials, use the information from the unit or module elements, performance criteria and assessment requirements to determine what competence looks like. Ensure that assessment tools are contextualised (or can be contextualised) to the student cohort to produce valid skills that are relevant to the student’s industry or work context. Use this information to set benchmarks for measuring the student’s performance using ‘observable behaviours’. This will ensure the student has:
Assessment must always be based on the performance of the individual student. If assessment tasks are undertaken as a group, each student must be assessed on each component of the task. Do not assume that because a group of students completed a task, each of them is competent. Recognition of prior learning is simply a form of assessment of a student’s competence. Recognition of prior learning uses evidence from formal, non‑formal and informal learning rather than from specific assessment activities directed by the RTO. This evidence is often combined with assessment activities sometimes known as ‘challenge testing’. As such, recognition of prior learning must be conducted with the same rigour as any other form of assessment. Assessment requirementsEach unit of competency contains assessment requirements grouped into three areas:
Performance evidence and knowledge evidence describe what a student must demonstrate in order to be considered competent. Assessment conditions describe the conditions under which a student must demonstrate this, including any specific requirements for resources, trainers and assessors and the context for assessment. Some training packages and courses may not have been updated to this format. In these cases, ‘required skills and knowledge’ and ‘evidence guide’ or similar terms are used. When planning assessment, ensure you address all of the requirements of the unit or module. This includes the performance criteria of each unit or module. This does not mean you have to develop separate assessment activities for each item, rather that as a whole your assessment activities must cover every area required. If your RTO applies any form of grading to students, ensure that this is applied only after the student has been assessed as fully competent and is in addition to a determination of competent or otherwise. As similar requirements are often expressed in multiple units of competency, you can often ‘cluster’ a number of units together for assessment to avoid repeating assessment of the same tasks. If you do this, take care to address all relevant environments and contexts in the assessment process and to meet any prerequisite requirements for every unit or module in the cluster. Analysis of each individual requirement across the cluster of units will reveal where such assessment methods are appropriate and where discrete assessment activities may be required. Implementing the principles of assessmentNo matter which assessment pathway or methods you use, the principles of fairness, flexibility, validity and reliability must be met. Fairness
Flexibility
Validity
Reliability
Implementing the rules of evidenceThe evidence used to make a decision about competence must be valid, sufficient, authentic and current. Validity
Sufficiency
Authenticity
Currency
Validation of assessmentValidation is a review of assessment judgements made by your RTO. Validation is generally conducted after assessment is complete. The process must be undertaken in a systematic way. Validation may include engagement with industry. This engagement aims to confirm your RTO’s assessment system:
Sampling approach to validationYour RTO must conduct validation activities systematically to confirm assessment judgements are being made correctly. While you are not required to validate every assessment judgement, a valid sampling approach provides a quality review process and allows you to infer that, overall, your RTO’s assessment judgements have been valid. Make sure that the sample of assessment judgements selected for validation is random and that it is representative of all assessment judgements. This will allow you to reliably predict the likelihood of any assessment judgement being valid. ASQA’s validation sample size calculator can assist you in determining the required sample size—this is likely to be smaller than you would think, particularly where large numbers of assessment judgements have been made. Choosing validatorsChoose validators who are independent of delivery and assessment of the training product being validated and, particularly, the assessment judgements being considered to maintain professional distance and integrity. People involved in validation must have:
Your RTO may choose to take a ‘team’ approach to validation, in which the validation team members collectively hold the required qualifications, skills and knowledge. Trainers and assessors can be involved in validation activities, as long as they were not directly involved in the particular instance of delivery and assessment of the training product being validated (Except for validation of TAE Training Products—refer to the previous page for guidance on choosing TAE validators.). A guide to complianceThe type of evidence you should retain to demonstrate your assessment system’s effectiveness depends to some extent on the context in which it is to be used.
How can my RTO demonstrate and provide evidence of compliant practice?ASQA’s regulatory experience shows that many RTOs continue to struggle to demonstrate compliance with Standard 1, in particular with clause 1.8. This calls into question the integrity of the qualifications issued and in the long term can have a detrimental effect on student and employer confidence in the outcomes of the training system. You need to show that your RTO’s practice aligns with your assessment system and validation plan. Consider what information sources will confirm that your RTO practices and assessment methods—including your validation activities—support this alignment. An example of this might be ensuring actual completed student assessments are retained in the appropriate student files, aligned with the appropriate assessment tool. You will need to retain sufficient assessment evidence to be able to validate assessment judgements. ASQA’s general direction, retention requirements for completed student assessment items requires that RTOs retain all completed assessment items relating to each unit or module for six months from the date on which the decision on competence for the individual unit or module was made. If you can’t retain the actual item (e.g. construction projects or perishable items), retain evidence, such as photographs, showing that the standard of the item or work completed justifies the assessment outcome. Completed assessment items such as assignments should not be handed back to students until the six-month period has expired. At performance assessment (audit) ASQA will only ask you to produce those assessment records your RTO is required to retain. You can compare assessment evidence to the requirements of the unit of competency or cluster of units to determine whether:
If the assessment is completed via recognition of prior learning, the requirements of the Standards do not change. However, you may need to collect and consider a greater variety of evidence when making the assessment decision than when assessment is completed through ‘traditional’ assessment activities. Similarly, the same requirements of the Standards apply to distance and online delivery methods, but you may need to change the type of evidence considered. Regardless of the mode of delivery or engagement, all assessment must meet the same Standards. Part of the evidence that determines whether assessment has been conducted adequately is the evidence criteria that your assessors use to judge the quality of performance and make their decisions. Evidence criteria could be in the form of:
How prescriptive such material is depends on the nature of the unit—units from lower AQF level qualifications will tend to be more prescriptive with ‘correct’ responses, while those at higher levels may have broader guidelines. You need to maintain evidence showing:
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