OCN Northern Ireland
November E-Zine
Coming Soon...New OCNNI Website
OCNNI will have a new website up and running early in the new year. Our aim with this website is to improve communication between ourselves and our clients, offering a new level of customer care and satisfaction. In conjunction with our new website we want to offer you the opportunity to make the most of some free advertising space on it. If you are interested in promoting your centre could you please contact Matthew at mmccormick@ocnni.org.uk. He will contact you regarding the information he will need to make this possible.
Congratulations to the Northern Ireland Youth Forum
The Northern Ireland Youth Forum picked the Inaugural Voices Award at the MTV European Music Awards on Sunday 6th November. This Belfast based collective who, together use their voices to make real change happen. The award was picked up by Ben Mallon – Chair of the Executive Committee. Follow this link for the full story!
Quartz Reminder
It will be mandatory for all OCN centres to start using our new learner registration and awards system (QUARTZ) from January 2012. If you have not already done so please register for one of our training dates through this link.
Providing Reasonable Assessment Opportunities To
All Learners
An essential part of the delivery of any qualification is the assurance that learners are provided with the opportunity to have fair assessments. What does this mean in practice? Essentially, learners should have equal access to demonstrate they can meet the assessment criteria. Thus, their experience of assessment should be one in which they do not feel disadvantaged because of special requirements relating to disabilities or learning difficulties. Missing an assessment event through illness or for personal reasons does not require a reasonable adjustment as it is an unpredictable event that should be treated considerately and in line with the assessment policy of the centre.
OCN NI recommends centres, as a point of good practice, to identify learner needs which might affect fair assessment at the earliest stage. A quality meeting led by the IV at the stage before a course runs is a suitable event to discuss the assessment model for the course and agree reasonable adjustments required to allow the learner(s) to be assessed within the regulatory guideline. Tutors, assessors and internal verifiers should collaborate and record this process.
Recording is important since the IV sampling activity to ensure assessment needs to include any reasonable assessment adjustments. For this reason OCN NI requests IVs to use the NQ13 form which informs their sampling strategy and validates their good practice.
Providing learners with a reasonable assessment opportunity can be a balancing act for the centre as the assessment adjustment should take account of particular requirements, without giving unfair advantage over other learners.
The nature of any reasonable adjustments depends on the particular requirements involved and outlines reasonable adjustments which are at the discretion of the centre and others which require OCN NI approval (Centres should refer to Qualification Guides for guidance on mandatory assessments). OCN NI provides support in its reasonable adjustment policy document which centres can download from the OCN NI website : http://www.ocnni.org.uk/downloads.asp
Note
In certain circumstances it is not appropriate to apply reasonable adjustments where the learner’s particular difficulty directly affects performance in the actual attributes to be assessed. In other words when learners are disabled and the learner’s attribute affected cannot be assessed. In such circumstances centres should seek advice and guidance from OCN NI or a specialist agency.
Centres can obtain relevant guidance on reasonable adjustment procedures from OCN NI.
Contact Simon: shamilton@ocnni.org.uk
Telephone: (028) 90463990
Our Vision Statement
To be recognised and respected as the leading credit based learning and development body in Ireland, promoting social inclusion, wider participation and community transformation.
