Continuing Professional Development
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is extremely important as an assessor as it allows you to maintain and improve your skills and knowledge. By completing regular training courses and adding them to your CPD record, it will help you maintain high standards.
Often, assessors are so focused on helping their learners through their courses that keeping a CPD record up to date slips through the cracks. Let’s have a quick look into some easy ways that you can add to your CPD record.
What is CPD?
CPD is a great way to manage your development as an assessor. Not only does it help you get into the habit of recording your achievements, but it is also easy to review and reflect upon them. There are 5 requirements within the CPD process that you need to follow:
- Your CPD should be a documented process, in the form of a record.
- It should be completely self-directed by you.
- Your CPD should focus on learning from experience, reflective learning, and reviews.
- Goals and objectives should be set from your CPD record.
- It should include both formal and informal learning you have carried out.
What counts towards my CPD record?
Training courses are the most effective way of expanding upon your knowledge and skills. Therefore, they’re perfect to add to your CPD. Workshops and conferences are also great ways to help you accelerate in your assessing career.
There are a few assessor-specific courses that we would recommend in order to help improve your CPD, which include:
- Education and Training Qualifications
- Information, Advice and Guidance Qualifications
- Refresher courses in Maths, English and ICT
- Massive Online Open Courses (these ones are free, and you can complete them from the comfort of your own home!)
Specialist Training Courses
If you are looking to stand out when applying for assessor jobs, completing a specialist training course as part of your CPD will look amazing on your CV. If you are a knowledgeable assessor or have even shadowed an experienced assessor, you may have come across learners with specific needs. This could range from working with someone who suffers from dyslexia; or even more complex needs such as a visual impairment.
By completing a specialist training course to help you assess those with learning difficulties, it demonstrates your willingness to assist others. Many specialist courses are CPD accredited, so get searching and don’t forget to add them to your CPD plan upon completion.
Standardisation Meetings
Standardisation meetings are held on a regular basis to ensure assessors understand the programme they are delivering. It is an opportunity to ensure consistent methods of delivering the course to learners. They should be held at least twice a year, and all assessors should attend the meetings. Records should be kept up to date of all standardisation activities. Not to mention it is a great way of Continuing Professional Development.
Keeping updated with industry news
Subscribing to industry-specific newsletters are perfect to stay on top of the latest changes within the sector. Attending CPD training courses and conferences can often take up a lot of time, so email newsletters provide a quicker alternative. Our very own newsletter is sent out regularly, and contains all the assessor-related news that you could wish for!
We hope this has helped you to see how easy it is to keep your CPD up to date. Remember that a work-life balance is important, so don’t burn yourself out and spend every extra hour of the day working on your CPD. If you would like any more information about the qualifications that we offer, please contact us on 01205 805 155 or email us at training@brooksandkirk.co.uk.
Steve is a Chartered Manager and a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.
He provides Educational Consultancy to the 19+ sector as well as being an Assessor, IQA, EPA and Digital Marketing Professional. When not doing any of these he finds time, every now and then, to write blogs and articles.