ABSTRACT
After giving a brief history of recent vocational education and training in the UK, this chapter looks at some current trends: broadening assessment to cover a wider range of skills, including the idea of ‘competence’; the continuing trend to greater professionalism in assessment; division of both education and training programmes into relatively short ‘modules’, and the growing recognition of the need to update the skills and knowledge of the workforce. There is a discussion of some current issues, including the need to assess process skills, transfer of knowledge and skills and core skills, demand for mutual recognition of qualifications by awarding bodies and the practical uses of norm- and criterion-referencing. The chapter then identifies the assessment methods most used for different levels of cognitive, communication, psychomotor and affective skills, and methods of assessing competence in an occupation or range of tasks. Methods of reporting results, including profiling, are surveyed. Implications of information technology for recording results and for assessing candidates ‘on demand’ are described. Throughout the chapter there are references to the implications of the Review of Vocational Qualifications and the extension of the Youth Training Scheme (YTS).
