Key Concepts and Principles of The Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment

Internal quality assurance has many purposes. An internal quality assurance has the responsibility to oversee several parts such as areas for improvement, learner’s progress, maintain a good relationship with all assessors, employers, and to comply with centre and awarding bodies policies. It is essential the candidate must be central to the whole process of quality assurance as this is about the learner journey. With this in mind, the internal quality assurance has to check the performance of delivery and accuracy of assessment. This can be done through talking to several candidates and assessors and sampling the work from several candidates. The main objective for the internal quality assurance is that they must rigorously maintain national occupational standards and that each department complies with the awarding body.

If the internal quality assurance discovers a problem or a potential problem they need to address it as quickly as possible before it becomes out of hand, this could be a weakness of one of the assessment team or a trend that has started. Possible problems could include delivery problems, and learning styles not being addressed, or candidates not making enough progress. Depending on the problem, the internal quality assurer could discuss it with the assessor, or review agreed targets and alter them when the situation progresses and improves through CPD activities such as standardisation meetings and one to one meetings.

As an internal quality assurance, I am responsible for ensuring that all assessors are conducting assessments in the correct way, and at the appropriate level. I will need to sample candidates work on a regular basis to check that it has been passed at a satisfactory level. I expect that all assessors understand that there is a certain level that is expected, and this standard should be consistent across the board. If I discovered that an assessor is regularly passing inadequate work, then as the internal quality assurance, I will need to intervene. The intervention that I decide on could be observing the assessor assessing, reviewing assessment planning and giving constructive feedback, and arranging meetings regularly so that assessors can compare each other’s good practices.

Depending on the targets of the action, it will affect what aspects will be monitored. For example, observing candidates in the work place could be an issue. So, the observations will be concentrated on that, until it improves. I have to maintain consistency, reliability, fairness and validity of the courses, as this is checked by the external quality assurance. If the standards drop, and substandard work is passed then the organisation stands to lose the right to offer that course. In turn, assessors and other people linked with the course may lose their jobs.