Quality Assurance and Standardisation Procedures in Own Area of Practice

• For the BTEC Levels 2, 3 and Higher National Qualifications in Construction and the Built Environment qualifications I assess, all summative assessments are internally verified by the lead IQA before they are released to the students. The lead IQA informs us of the deadline to upload all the assignments to a central department folder on MS Teams. He then verifies the assignments to ensure they are fit for purpose and in line with the requirements of the awarding body, Pearson. If changes are required, feedback would be provided to the affected lecturer, and the required changes would be made. Once approved, he then notifies the lecturers about the suitability of the assessment. Also, as part of the standardisation process, a standard assignment template is used by the whole department to design the assessments. This makes it easier to know and includes all the standard information.

• I requested from the lead IQA the quality assurance process as it relates to grading and returning marked summative assessments of students. I wanted to know if the graded works and assignments of students are sampled by the IQA before they are returned. I was informed that this is not the process for this qualification. I was told the marked assignments should be returned to the students within three academic weeks, as they do not need to be internally verified by an IQA before they are returned to the learners. I was told that if a student disagrees with the marked work, then the appeals procedure for challenging marked assignments would have to be followed. Also, the external quality assurer/external verifier would later sample students’ works to check the judgment that has been made by the assessor.

• Another example is the level 4 NVQ Diploma in Construction Site Supervision (Construction) qualification I assess. I make judgments about the evidence provided by the learners against the criteria. Then the assigned IQA checks the assessment judgment that I have made and decides whether he agrees with it or not. He can suggest further information be provided by the learners or approve the judgment made by the assessor. The external verifier, who works with the Awarding Body (Pearson), then checks the judgment made by the IQA.

• Also, I requested from the lead IQA, the management system used by the department to officially record the grades of the student. He then informed me that these are recorded in the construction department folder on the central H: drive.

Reference/Bibliography

• Davies, A. and Stiling, L. (2021) TAQA – training assessment and quality assurance [PowerPoint presentation]. 22 October.

• Gravells, A. (2014) Achieving your assessment & quality assurance units (TAQA). 2nd edn. London: Learning Matters SAGE.

• Walters, P. (2019) The importance of quality assurance. Available at: https://www.tquk.org/2019/10/04/the-importance-of-quality-assurance/ (Accessed: 20 December 2021)