Appendix 6: Principles of assessment

Fairness

• The individual student’s needs are considered in the assessment process.
• Where appropriate, reasonable adjustments are applied by the training provider to consider the individual student’s needs.
• The training provider informs the student about the assessment process and provides them with the opportunity to challenge the result of assessment and be reassessed if necessary.

Flexibility

Assessment is flexible to the individual by:

• reflecting the student’s needs
• assessing competencies held by the student 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

• An assessment decision of the training provider is justified, based on the evidence of performance of the individual student.

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 the practical application
• Assessment to be based on evidence that demonstrates that a student could demonstrate these skills and knowledge in other similar situations, and
• Judgement of competence is based on evidence of student performance that is aligned to the unit(s) of competency and associate assessment requirements.

Reliability

• Evidence presented for assessment is consistently interpreted and assessment results are comparable irrespective of the assessor conducting the assessment.