Wanting to Become an Assessor But Have No Learners?

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Becoming an Assessor is one of the most rewarding career choices, as well as being incredibly flexible so you can work around your other day-to-day commitments. If you have carried out your research you will probably be aware that the qualification you need to become an Assessor is the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA). This will qualify you to assess the competency of learners both in their place of work and within learning environments too. During this qualification, you need to access to learners to assess.

If you take the teaching qualification (the Level 3 Award in Education & Training), you may be surprised to hear that you don’t have to work with real learners. This can be carried out in a simulation-style environment. However, for CAVA, you will need to work with learners who are working towards real, accredited qualifications. This can be difficult as essentially you need an assessing qualification in order to get an assessing job; but you need to be able to work in assessing in order to gain the full qualification. All a bit confusing, isn’t it?

Access to Learners – CAVA

In total, there are 3 units within CAVA:

  1. Unit 1 – Understanding the Principles and Practices of Assessment
  2. Unit 2 – Assessing Occupational Competence in the Work Environment
  3. and last but not least, Unit 3 – Assessing Vocational Skills, Knowledge and Understanding

The first unit is more knowledge-based and therefore you don’t need access to learners to assess. Units 2 and 3 do require you to have access to learners, but don’t worry – we are the solution! If you undertake the CAVA with Brooks and Kirk, we guarantee to provide you with learners for the assessments. But what does this actually mean?

‘Access to learners’ means we can give you access to two learners to assess throughout your course. It is an Ofqual requirement to carry out real-life assessments with two learners in order to become a fully qualified assessor. At Brooks and Kirk, we save you all of the hassle of finding your own learners; hiring a premises to carry out the assessment; discussing your course with your employer. That’s because you can use ours!

All assessments with your learners will be completed as part of your coursework at no extra cost. Part of the necessary assessments will be carried out during your one-day face-to-face session via Zoom. The rest are carried out online using our Virtual Learning Environment.

Some training providers don’t offer access to learners or charge fees for using their own, so keep an eye out if you’re doing some window-shopping. Rest assured, with us at Brooks and Kirk, you get access to learners guaranteed and stress-free.

Using Your Own Learners

You can enrol onto our CAVA course and use your own learners if you wish to. You will need access to two learners that are studying in your area of occupational competence, and also a qualified Internal Quality Assurer that can assess you assessing them. In terms of accessing these learners, we would recommend you try the following:

Use learners at your place of work

The learners that you use for your qualification don’t necessarily have to be your learners – they just need to be studying in the area you want to assess in. A minimum of two observations will be required where you will be marked on how you assess learners. Many Assessors in training like to be in control and create a situation where they are able to achieve all outcomes with just having two learners. Others require more observations in order to ensure all the criteria are met, it just depends on the situation. Either option is absolutely fine.

Volunteer at your local college

Most places welcome extra resources and will be more than happy to take on volunteer trainee assessors. Now if you have a full-time job currently and are also training to become an Assessor you may be thinking you don’t have time for all this extra work. Don’t worry, you don’t need to put in really long hours of volunteering. You just need to get to know the learners (as this will help your observation go more smoothly!), understand what you are assessing and organise the paperwork too. Finally, you will need time to undertake a minimum of two observations for your qualification.

Start your qualification whilst applying for assessing roles

If you are working towards an Assessor qualification, this will be more than enough to convince potential employers that you are serious about becoming an Assessor. This puts you in a good position to start applying for Assessor positions. Most organisations understand the process of becoming a fully qualified Assessor, and will be aware that you need learners in order to complete the final two units. Even if you just start applying for roles once you have passed the knowledge unit that should be absolutely fine. You can simply pick up the other two units once you have found learners to work with.

Remember, if you are unable to find learners to assess yourself then we are always here as a back up at Brooks and Kirk and are more than happy to provide you with the learners you need in order to complete your Assessor qualification. For more information on this, please give us a call on 01205 805155 or send us an email to training@brooksandkirk.co.uk.