If the Assessor Candidate is going to assess in a specific trade, does the Training Centre carrying out the Assessment of the Assessor Candidate, have to have an Internal Verifier who is trade specific also?
John Downey
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6 Responses
No this is not necessary
The Internal Verifier for the Training Centre offering A&V awards is IVing the assessment processes in the Training Centre and is therefore governed by the Assessment Strategy of the A&V awards. The Assessor-Candidate’s IV is governed by the Assessment Strategy of whatever award they are undertaking.
As the Training Centre’s IV is not IVing the Assessor-Candidate’s work they do not need to have trade specific knowledge or competence.
The Centre will need to have other trade-specific assessors who
A trainee assessor must have their work second assessed by a qualified assessor who is trade specific to the work of the candidate who the trainee assessor is assessing.
It is best practice for the IV to know the subject area
Although Andrea’s answer is technically correct, in practice it is helpful for both the assessor candidate’s assessor and their IV to have at least a good familiarity with the occupation on which the assessments are based. I have had the experience of having to “rescue” assessor candidates within my network because their assessor award was delivered by a college-based assessor who did not understand the subject matter or context within which they were working. The A1 assessor was unable, therefore, to support and judge their assessor-candidates appropriately. Their assessor also did not understand the various time and other occupational pressures the candidates and assessor-candidates were working under, and tried to set unrealistic goals.
Likewise, an IV who is unfamiliar with the subject will not be able to support the A1 assessor or to judge whether or not s/he is supporting the assessor-candidates appropriately.
Agree or disagree?
I agree completely with the comments from Andrea however if what Cynthia says is true then the IV from a Training Provider would have to be familiar with lots of different occupations. It appears that ENTO thinks this way. I feel the A1 is a Learning & Development award therefore the Assessor & Verifier should be familiar in Learning & Development.
Agree AND disagree
I don’t actually disagree with Andrea – what she says is true, according to the Learning and Development assessment strategy. The assessment and verification of an assessor-candidate only requires occupational competence in assessment and verification.
What I was pointing out was that, although the above is true, in practice it is very difficult to make a judgement about the appropriateness and effectiveness of an assessor-candidate’s skills and judgement without knowing something about what they are assessing. My experience and observation is that a training provider which delivers the A and V awards to people from a wide variety of occupations may not support all of them EFFECTIVELY, due to a lack of understanding about the occupational standards being assessed.
The practice under discussion may be acceptable, according to the standards, but is it best practice, and does it really support and assessor-candidates?
Arian Associates Ltd
I agree with Andrea below :-
A & V Awards are assessed as stand alone qualifications in the NVQ field and have their own set of standards therefore they do not need to be occupationally specific in their delivery – by the very nature of the vocational areas that are being assessed and verified, as part of the attainment of these awards, they will quite naturally almost become vocationally specific anyway.
However, once these awards are attained you need to be occupationally competent in the vocational filed in which you intend to use them.