What is EAL Centre Assessment Standard Scrutiny (CASS)?
CASS refers to the arrangements that awarding organisations have in place with centres to check assessment judgements for centre-marked assessments. EAL has one CASS strategy that encompasses all their regulated qualifications, where Centre assessment is undertaken and will maintain validity of its qualifications through close scrutiny of the centre marked assessments within them.
What does this mean for EAL centres?
EAL is currently reviewing its arrangements with recognised centres with an initial focus on how Centre marked assessments are delivered and monitored. The overall purpose of this review is to ensure that EAL qualifications that are marked by a Centre remain valid and reliable and continue to be valued by learners and employers.
As part of this work, we looked at how:
- EAL design, develop and assign risks to qualifications
- Centres are recognised
- Qualifications are approved
- Centres mark their assessments
- Centres quality assure their marking and their staff who mark assessments
- EAL monitor Centre marked assessments and the markers
- Smarter Touch system provides information (internal and external)
- Centre claims are processed
Following this review EAL will be introducing some enhancements to areas of our External Quality Assurance Processes and will be providing information advice and guidance to assist centres with their Internal Quality Assurance Processes.
Meeting regulatory requirements and what changes can Centres expect
Our approach has been developed considering the regulatory changes and the different types of qualifications and assessments delivered by our centres using a risk-based approach, changes will include the following:
In summary, the changes will demonstrate the controls that EAL has in place with their recognised centres and include:
- All centre marked assessments will be subject to a form of CASS
- EAL will put in place and keep under review a CASS strategy for all assessments marked by centres
- EAL will provide processes and guidance for moderation, which must take places for all cohorts of learners before results are issued
- EAL will risk rate qualifications, allowing for other forms of CASS to take place before or after results are issued
- Updates on systems and processes and guidance will be launched during March and April 2022
Over the coming month, EAL will be enhancing systems to support their arrangement for CASS for Centres that mark assessments on behalf of the awarding body.
There will be changes made to your centre engagement report., this will have a new look and will provide Centres with greater detail on all aspects of the monitoring engagement. part of the setup for this new report will require updates to your Centre profile.
You may experience some automated updates as our team completes the transfer of section risks into sector risks.
Once we have concluded the work your assigned Centre EQA will be on hand to provide you with further detail around the report, outcome, and your new centre profile.
We will also be making some short module videos to help explain some of these changes in more detail.
Next Steps
This will be the first phase of changes and improvements for recognised centres we'll see over the coming months.
Future updates will include:
- EAL Centre moderation requirements
- EAL internal quality assurance process & guidance
- EAL Centre engagement strategy
- EAL Centre operations manual
- New qualification approval form & process
- Qualification risk rating indicator
