1. Introduction
Training is crucial in many education and assessment organisations:
- Government bodies need to upskill large volumes of staff when introducing new educational and assessment programmes.
- Many awarding organisations find that the constantly evolving regulatory requirements mean that their staff teams need highly specialised training in particular areas of qualification and assessment development, or in effective awarding practices in order to maintain compliance
- Publishers need all staff to understand how the standardised scores they offer to schools and learners are produced.
AQA AlphaPlus is recognised as a leading provider of training related to assessment, e-assessment and associated processes. We have delivered assessment-related training to a range of organisations in the UK and internationally since 2006. Our customers include awarding bodies, ministries of education, regulatory authorities and professional bodies.
2. Knowledge transfer
AlphaPlus is a leading service provider in the planning, development and implementation of assessments in the UK. We spend our days working with assessment agencies from an assessment’s conception, through the specification and question-and-task writing, trialling and performance analysis, to live use and monitoring. As such, we live and breathe assessment.
We are not a publisher – all the intellectual property we create is owned by our clients. As part of this, we believe in supporting our clients to develop inhouse capability and capacity, and this applies particularly to the complex area of assessment. Our internal team regularly draw on their experience to create bespoke training on this topic. They work closely with client teams in skills building and co-development. We have supported work shadowing and other deeply integrated forms of capacity building with clients in the UK and internationally.
3. Our approach to delivering training
Our programmes are typically bespoke courses, with an emphasis on workshop and practical activity, delivered on site to awarding organisation staff teams. Training is delivered by senior staff and directors at AlphaPlus, who are able to draw on their extensive experience from supporting awarding organisations across the sector.
Our programmes are modular, which allows us to customise them to meet your requirements.
AlphaPlus offers a range of standard modules which are then customised to suit the needs of our customers. Topics include:
- Qualification validity and reliability
- Assessment statistics
- Training on how item writing (e.g. multiple choice questions, higher order objective questions)
- Grading and standard setting
- Regulation and compliance for awarding organisations
- Assessment and learning
- Maths and English assessment
- History of and current developments in vocational qualifications
- Vocational qualification development
Training can be delivered at on site, or at an external location. Delegates receive a complete training pack comprising the materials covered, a handbook covering the subject, copies of the exercises, and a targeted reading list for further study.
Our expert assessment managers and training team will design a programme to suit your staff, your specific needs and your budget.
4. Example training projects
- CBSE and British Council India – Recruiting, designing and delivering training for 40 Assessments Designers, 180 Item Writers and supporting the development of 1500 items in Maths, English and Science.
- Providing National Continuous Professional Development for middle managers in colleges on leading and managing change for T Levels (a new national vocational qualifications for 16-18 year olds in England).
- Delivering skills training packages for the Guyanese Ministry of Education’s School Exam Board on working with data and assessing higher order skills.
- Training the Singapore Ministry of Education in authoring innovative on-screen items to engage less academic students and enable them to demonstrate their science capability.
- Working with the Federation of Awarding Bodies, providing training in basic education statistics for vocational qualifications, including relevant assessment theory; general descriptive statistics; four basic analyses of classical test theory; and approaches to standard setting in vocational assessment.
- Training staff from SOLAS (Ireland’s further education and skills agency) to develop assessments for the Irish Apprenticeship Programmes, focussing on objective assessment design, assessing higher order skills and thinking using objective questions, and delivering these questions onscreen for candidates.
5. Contact us
To find out more about AlphaPlus can assist you with your training needs, please contact:
UK – Fraser Talbot fraser.talbot@alphaplus.co.uk
International – Syed Shah syed.shah@alphaplus.co.uk
