International Grades - Open Technologies

The process for designing tasks and tests is

• Draft materials to be originated and placed in the development folder.
• Independent competent person reviews, edits, amends and sends the amended work back to the originator.
• Originator and reviewer agree a final version.
• Third independent person tries out the final version feeding back any further comments.
• All assessment materials are therefore checked by at least three people.
• Feedback from Centres is received and acted upon.

Since the objective of the assessment is to judge competence of users against criteria related to operating a computer, reading and general language capability should not be a limiting factor. To this end for Entry level and Level 1 AB set tests and tasks that require reading questions and information, Centres can read questions to candidates. Every attempt should be made to support simple plain language.

The context of questions and tasks is considered to ensure they are generally applicable and known to the full range of users, for example age, male/female and culturally neutral.

The conditions for delivery of AB set tests and tasks and for coursework are provided on the community site and are part of the training provision. The Assessor requests a test/task from the certification site markbook when the criteria matching has been completed to the appropriate level. Account manager assures that the test/task is sent out and that it is not a test/task that could have been seen before by the candidates. Assessor administers the test and task transferring marks to the mark book. Account Manager samples work providing feedback as appropriate Account Manager together with Chief Assessor makes awards.

Procedure for Moderation and Verification

The procedure for checking criteria matching is for the Principal Assessor to implement a quality assurance policy as provided in the contract with the Awarding Body on the certification site. This will be verified at the Awarding Body annual visit. The criteria matching process is verified externally using Awarding Body set tests and tasks and sampling of on-line e-portfolios and Blogs.

The sampling of Awarding Body tests, tasks and on-line work will involve identifying candidates that have recently had results from a test or task entered into the on-line mark book on the certification site. The Account Manager will ask for unpredictable samples representing a spread of attainment and they will check the marking against the marking schemes for each task.  A sample size of at least 10% will be used but in any case the size will be statistically meaningful, for example if the entry size is 5 or less all the work will be checked. Where there is a difference of opinion between the Account Manager and the Assessor, the Account Manager will contact the Assessor and explain the reason why marks need adjustment. They will then request that the Assessor adjust any other marks similarly affected and the mark book entries will be refreshed. The Account Manager will keep a record of all marks that have been changed as a result of the moderation/verification process. In the case of an appeal against the Account Manager's decision, the appeals procedure will apply.

The Account Manager's work will be monitored by the Chief Assessor who will meet with the Account Manager monthly and scrutinise records sampling at least 10% of any amendments made to marks.

No Account manager will deal with any organisation in which they have a personal interest. All Account Managers are required to declare formally to the Chief Assessor if they are aware of any reason why a conflict of interest might arise from them checking the work of any Centre or Academy assigned to them.