What you must have before delivering an ELICOS program

You have an ELICOS program on scope and believe you're ready to deliver it. But do you have assessment tools that are mapped to the learning outcomes, validated, and ready for use?

If not, now is the time to develop and validate your assessment tools so they are prepared for teachers to use. Taking these steps ensures compliance as your classes commence.

Until now, CRICOS Consultancy has primarily provided compliance documents, assisted with scope and initial ELICOS applications to ASQA, and conducted ELICOS audits. However, more colleges are now seeking support in preparing ready-to-use, validated assessment tools.

Unlike VET programs, ELICOS courses have numerous learning outcomes. For example, a General English course typically includes around 10 learning outcomes per week, covering all four macro skills. While a single test can assess multiple outcomes, you will still need more than four assessments per week to comprehensively cover the macro skills. For a 10-week General English course, this amounts to approximately 40 assessment tools—an extensive collection of documents.

You are not required to assess students every week, but your assessment bank must include assessments that cover all learning outcomes in case your teachers need them.

Some may ask, "Why can't we just use the test papers from the core textbook?" When you validate those test papers, you will likely find that they focus on language spotlights, such as vocabulary and grammar, rather than the macro-skill learning outcomes. Others might ask, "Why can't we select classroom activities that students were taught and use them as assessments?" While this is possible, using the exact activity students have already completed—where they know the answers—would not constitute a valid assessment.

To maintain compliance, your assessment tools must be fair, valid, and reliable. The best approach is to create assessment tools that align with learning outcomes and have them validated before use.

To help our clients save time and resources, CRICOS Consultancy is releasing validated assessment tools for General English that align with our General English curriculum and syllabus.

Regardless of whether your curriculum was purchased externally or developed in-house, you must have validated assessments to meet compliance requirements. Ensure they are prepared before it’s too late.

For more information, or to view the General English assessment tools with mapping, please contact us.