Adult Education PTLLS: Principles of Assessment in Lifelong Learning

The assessment process is very important in learning and equally important is keeping up to date record of learner’s progress and assessment. The assessment record is useful for different reasons and involves teachers as well as learners. In this process the involvement of the learner includes mainly recognise the standards for achievements and make sure to submit on time the assessment activities and keep record of them. The most important types of record that a teacher should keep are mainly the following:

it’s useful to the teacher to record the learners starting point and their personal data. It’s also useful to record some more initial information about the learners to keep in mind for example which learner may need more support, which learner is more confident and which learners is more shy.

just a basic register to record daily presence and absence of each student for each lesson. This will give the teacher an idea of which learner may fall behind and may need a tutorial lesson. Non attendance could also help the teacher identifying some other issue that the learner may have, which may need referral to other professionals, or it could mean the learners are not fully satisfied with the teaching styles and teaching methods adopted by the teacher.

to make sure each lesson is planned carefully and meet all the standards. It’s also useful to the teacher for ongoing planning of assessment where they can plan any activitiy in order to assess the learners.

it’s a reflective record kept by each learner to track their own progress. This is mainly useful to the learner to set their own goals and record their improvement and basically gain confidence in their own abilities looking at how far they have come.

where a teacher keeps record of each learner’s progress. This is an ongoing process during the course, as the teacher should keep record of any kind of assessment takes place during the course. For each lesson, the teacher will take note of any sort od assessment such as questions and answers,

this is basically the record of the learners academic achievements with all the formal assessment proves such as essays, assignments, a basic register to keep record of each learner assignment pass.

The main reason to keep records is for the teacher to understand how the learners are progressing and achieving learning; if they are, the teaching styles and methods are right so the course is on the right path, if the learners are struggling the teacher may want to consider apporting some changes to the teaching styles. Apart from this first reason a teacher should also consider that in case a substitute teacher may take their place with the class, they need all the records of what the learners have achieved so far. A teacher should also consider that for every course they will have to submit evidences to the internal and external quality assurance. The internal quality assurance is an internal verification that ensure that all the learners have been assessed fairly and consistently following specific standards and it will ensure that there is enough clear evidence of assessment. The external quality assurance is a second verification on the internal work. The main aim of this external inspection is to make sure all the standards are met: making sure that the centre that organise the course and all the planning, delivery and assessment, are up to the national standards; verify the assessment decisions in accordance to national standards. This process of recording and providing evidence is very important especially when an organisation apply for funding in order to run a course.

I really hope you found this summary useful if you are approaching the teaching profession in the lifelong learning sector. There is much more to analyze regarding this topic. If you are interested you may want to read:

• Adult Education PTLLS: Health and Safety, Ground Rules, Motivation
• Adult Education PTLLS: Boundaries between the teaching role and other professional roles