Do your Assessors ask:

• What is the point of writing Assessor comments, when ākonga are provided verbal feedback and the assessments are filed away?
• Are comments feedback for ākonga or are they comments to justify the judgement?

Comments are important

Consider the purpose of commentary in the Assessor comments: they are to add depth and justification to the assessment judgements. This is part of a provider’s self-assurance process.

Post moderation themes we often see include comments in the Assessor Observation Checklist/Sheet being either too brief, generic, not specific about individual performance or lacking entirely.

Assessor feedback is also part of the triangulation of evidence. Comments from the assessor strengthen the overall decision, and they will be necessary when we move from unit standards to skill standards.

The assurance team provides feedback to providers as part of pre-assessment moderation to consider just how many assessor comments are necessary.

Good assessment practice – some examples

We would like to commend the following two school Assessors, who have marked BCATS assessments and demonstrated good practice, including exemplar Assessor comments.  The summary comments they included verified individual performance, and the samples would be valuable exemplars for any new Assessors.

A big shout out to:

• The Catlins Area School Assessor, Matthew Simpson.

 

• Hillmorton High School Assessor, Vicky Raybould. Vicky’s student had very limited English. While this may have been a barrier to their learning and execution, steps were taken to ensure it wasn’t a barrier to the student. The Assessment Record Sheet was converted to a Google document with a translation feature. The student was observed and given the opportunity to provide evidence of their understanding, both written and verbal, via demonstration. While the overall outcome was not achieved, the value of the Assessor’s commentary justified the final decision.