Initial assessment

Initial assessment is a general term used in colleges to refer to the formal and/or informal processes of identifying appropriate learning programmes for individual students. Such processes may relate to ascertaining the right level of programme within a chosen curriculum area (e.g. Foundation, Intermediate, Advanced). It may refer to whether or not individual students are deemed in need of learning support. It may comprise any one or more of a range of activities, such as:

self-assessment checklists
formal literacy or numeracy tests
psychometric tests of potential
informal projects and assignments.

In schools, where most students entering the sixth form are likely to be known to the teaching staff, formal tests or other exercises to investigate students' levels of performance are not generally felt to be necessary. However, in relation to key skills, it is worth considering whether existing knowledge could be usefully supplemented by a similar process, even in small schools.