‘In a couple of weeks aspirant British citizens will be tested on British history for the first time. Since 2004 they’ve been tested on geography, customs and practicalities, on the basis of a book called Life in the United Kingdom, whose third edition was published in late January. Like the previous editions, the book reveals a bit about what the government thinks new citizens need to know, and a lot about how it would like Britain to be known.’
Reference: David Edgar The Guardian,
Carrie worked as a new assessor in a large adult education college. She was chatting in the staff room to her friend who was also an assessor on a similar course. Carrie said that the internal verifier had emailed her to let her know which pieces of her students’ work she would need to look at when she made her IV visits to the her course. Carrie thought this was helpful as she could then make sure that the IV would see her good students’ work in the best possible light. Carrie’s friend is not sure.
What advice should her friend give Carrie ? As an internal verifier what advice would you give the IV?
Barry was a tutor who had just interviewed a potential student for a course. During the interview he discovered that the new student’s previous qualification had been acquired as result of a fraud. The qualification had been obtained from a college X that had allowed one of their assessors to sign a form saying that the student had undergone work experience when he had not in fact done so. This student had not done a work placement, neither had any of his class colleagues and so he had not realised it was course requirement. When his previous assessor had signed off his work he had assumed this meant that all was acceptable. The student was shocked when Barry told him his previous college X appeared to have committed a fraud and he said, “That means that my qualification is like an empty shell, what’s going to happen next?” . If you were Barry’s mentor what advice would you give Barry ? Should he:-
a) Contact the College X where the fraud had taken place and tell the quality manager
b) Contact the Awarding Body that provided the certificate and inform their external quality reviewers
c) Contact another standard setting body like the College funders – the Skills Funding Agency or the college inspectors OFSTED
d) Do nothing and tell nobody about this as you don’t want the student to suffer any detriment
e) Contact a professional standards body like the Institute for Learning for advice
Anthea worked at a college that was well-known locally for its pastoral care for all its students. There was a strong family atmosphere and there were several family groups employed there – parents and grown up children, brothers and sisters, married partners and unmarried partners. Anthea was employed as an Assessor and was asked to assess the course work of a relative. She felt confident to do this fairly as she was following the assessment criteria carefully – in fact she felt if anything she might be too hard on him rather than too generous in her marking.
If you were the internal verifier what would you do?