Taqa Assessor Award

1.1 Assessment is about judging if, how and what level of learning has taken place. An assessor's function is to decide if a learner has developed skills, knowledge, understanding and competence in a particular field as well as if the learner is showing the attitude required for the application of the learning within that field. Assessing is not the same as evaluating. Rather than the focus being on the programme or course the learner is on (evaluation), the focus is instead on the learner and their development.

Assessors need to determine a learner's knowledge and performance against a set of pre-defined criteria. These criteria may be set up to assess learning for an eventual formal qualification in a particular topic or job role. Qualifications can be knowledge based, requiring the assessment of understanding, or they can be performance based allowing a learner to acquire and produce evidence on their ability to practically apply their skills. Learners can also be assessed on the basis of their work based competence, to achieve a formal qualification, to match an individual organisation's standards or to provide evidence that the learner can effectively perform what is required for their job role.

The assessor's role is two fold: to encourage learners to improve and to reinforce the learning that has already taken place. Assessors need to assist learners to recognise what they have already achieved and to highlight what learners may still require in order to improve or progress further. Additionally there are two forms of assessment that differ according to when they are performed: a formative assessment allows an assessor to ascertain a learner's current position or any learning that has already taken place in order to plan for further learning, improvement or development. Summative assessments allow information and evidence to be collected in order to confirm that learning has taken place.

1.2 The assessment process enables a learner to be assessed in