Fair Access of Assessment

This section contains a statement of EDGEWORKS policy for:

  • Access to equality of opportunity in the assessment process.
  • Learners with special needs / additional learning needs.
  • Fairness in assessment and quality assurance.

Access to assessment and equality of opportunity

EDGEWORKS will ensure that learners have access to assessment for qualifications regardless of their sex, sexuality, marital status, age, religion, colour, race, nationality, ethnic origin or disability.

The assessment process must be free from any barriers which unnecessarily restrict access. In particular the Centre Manager must ensure that.

  • There are no upper or lower age limits (unless this is a legal requirement of the employment role/care setting), unless restricted by funding.
  • Assessment is independent of a specified period of time to be spent in education, training or work,
    • except where legal/statutory constraints make this necessary
  • Any learners with additional/special support needs are given the opportunity to discuss ways of
    • providing solutions to problems they feel are related to access and other issues and have the potential to impede their demonstration of competence. Wherever possible the necessary resources are made available to facilitate the assessment of these learners.
    • configuring the online system to suit their individual access requirements.
  • Assessment decisions are free from discrimination on any grounds other than competence.

Wherever possible, work should be completed in normal working time. Managers should ensure suitable learning and development time is given for this. Issues in this area should be highlighted in writing to the Centre Manager.

Learners with special needs / additional learning needs

Internal verifiers must ensure that access to assessment is available to all learners, and the assessment system must allow them to demonstrate their competence / knowledge in the most appropriate way.

To enable access to assessment, there needs to be a reasonable amount of flexibility in considering alternative methods of assessment satisfaction.

There may be learners with particular special needs, such as those with a visual, hearing or mobility impairment, or learning difficulty, which need to use alternative means of providing evidence. In these cases, there is a need to adopt different approaches to assessing particular elements of competence at all times, however, the proposed assessment methods must be genuine alternatives ensuring that the evidence collected is of equal quality and rigor to that required of other learners. The requirements of the standards cannot be compromised.

Any aids can be used in assessment that could reasonably be employed in the job, such as:.

  • A word processor for learners with writing or learning difficulties.

If there are any concerns about the use of alternative assessment methods the Centre Manager must be consulted and, if need be, the matter will be referred to the External Verifier.

Fairness in assessment and quality assurance

The internal verifier will ensure that the principles of open access and fair assessment are central to qualifications and Qualification and curriculum framework (QCF) units. Part of the internal verifier’s role is to guide and support assessors to ensure judgments relating to assessments are fair, consistent and free from any bias.

Fairness is making sure that:

  • The system has not asked the learner to do things which are not required by the qualification.
  • Learners are carrying out tasks of equal difficulty in relation to the same unit.
  • The methods of assessment used for each learner offer equal rigor, while providing valid and reliable assessment.
  • Each learner has covered all the requirements of the qualification.
  • Assessment opportunities do not discriminate against individuals or groups of learners.