An End Point Assessment Organisation Must Be Unbiased and Independent
Many large manufacturing organisations have apprentice schemes in place, that ensure them a steady supply of trained personnel who would have the skills needed for continuing their operations. To ensure that the trained apprentice has the skills to do the job they have been trained for it is important that a final assessment or end point assessment be made on completion of the training.
To ensure that such final assessment is unbiased and factual it can be of great advantage if it is carried out by an independent end point assessment organisation like
that has the necessary expertise and ability to conduct such assessments. Most organisations conduct their training programs so that apprentices are already working in environments that they will need to work in when they are absorbed into the company. They make a final assessment of the apprentices before they are passed on to the EPA for the final assessment of their knowledge and practical capabilities.
Any chosen organisation for conducting end point assessment after the completion of a training program must be aware of the apprentice standards for which they have to conduct the assessments. They must be registered with the authorities for assessing the particular skills for which the training has been imparted to the apprentices and have properly qualified assessors who can make the assessments.
There is in place government legislation that requires endpoint assessment to be conducted by bodies that are separate from those who provided the original training. Any end point assessment organisation must provide assessments that are valid, reliable, and their assessment tools must help to maintain credibility and value in their design, be comparable, manageable, and have a minimum bias. The people involved in designing these end point assessments must understand the industry for which the apprentices will work and will fit the purpose for which they have been trained. For this, they need to work in collaboration with the employers, and their assessors and training providers. Quality must be assured through risk-based approaches. This assessing organisation must provide regular training to their staff to ensure their professional development and always maintain a high quality of reports that they make to the management.
Any properly run organisation that provides end point assessment must provide these EPAs directly to the employers or any providers of training. They must also be able to partner with organisations that have similar capabilities and capacities to work independently as needed. These EPAs must be registered, must be financially stable, have good corporate governance and the capacity to deliver the required assessments. without having any conflict of interest. They need to be listed to work with the standard for an apprenticeship that the industry needs and here previous experience in the sector can be a great determinant of their capabilities. They need to be completely independent and have no connection in any way with the future employer of the apprentices or their training providers. They must have nothing to gain from the assessment that will be considered a conflict of interest.
