The principles of assessment are part of your assessment plan. No matter what assessment pathway or methods you use, the principles of fairness, flexibility, validity and reliability must be met.
The evidence used to make a decision about competence must be valid, sufficient, authentic and current. Let’s look at the principles of assessment:
Fairness
The individual learner’s needs are considered in the assessment process.
Where appropriate, reasonable adjustments are applied by the RTO to take into account the individual learner’s needs.
The RTO informs the learner about the assessment process, and provides the learner with the opportunity to challenge the result of the assessment and be reassessed if necessary.
Flexibility
Assessment is flexible to the individual learner by:
- reflecting the learner’s needs;
- assessing competencies held by the learner no matter how or where they have been acquired; and
- drawing from a range of assessment methods and using those that are appropriate to the context, the unit of competency and associated assessment requirements, and the individual.
Validity
Any assessment decision of the RTO is justified, based on the evidence of performance of the individual learner.
Validity requires:
- assessment against the unit(s) of competency and the associated assessment requirements covers the broad range of skills and knowledge that are essential to competent performance;
- assessment of knowledge and skills is integrated with their practical application;
- assessment to be based on evidence that demonstrates that a learner could demonstrate these skills and knowledge in other similar situations; and
- judgement of competence is based on evidence of learner performance that is aligned to the unit/s of competency and associated assessment requirements.
Reliability
Evidence presented for assessment is consistently interpreted and assessment results are comparable irrespective of the assessor conducting the assessment.
Auditors will be looking at how you have incorporated the principles of assessment into your tools. Principle of Assessment: Validity
Validity requires the judgement of competence to be based on evidence of learner performance that is, evidence is aligned to the unit(s) of competency and associated assessment requirements. As the applicant did not demonstrate the assessment system will ensure all of the required evidence will be collected in accordance with the training package the applicant has not demonstrated compliance with the principle of assessment valid.