Reviewing and recording your student’s skills development and achievement

Now that you have studied the contents of the portfolio, let’s consider how it is used to record your student’s achievement of the required skills and competencies, types of experience in practice and associated practice hours. The portfolio pages that relate to this are:

• Record of skills development and achievement
• Summative assessment outcome – record of achievement of skills
• Summative assessment outcome – record of required hours and experience
• Record of experiences 

Record of skills development and achievement

You use the ‘Record of skills development and achievement’ to show your student’s progress towards and completion of the required performance level against each NMC skill or field specific competency. In preparation for the initial review meeting the student should have completed a self-assessment against the skills and field specific competencies (where relevant) and under the ‘Initial review’ column in the Record of Progress forms, completed the first column labelled ‘Self-assessed’, by inserting the initials of the level of practice the student believes s/he is practising under: direct supervision (DS), indirect supervision (IS) or independently (I). At the start of any practice module in the programme, the student is unlikely to have had the opportunity to develop the specified skills or competencies and therefore to be able to demonstrate a sufficient range of evidence to meet the ‘Level of practice’ criteria (see pg 35 KYN117 portfolio). Therefore at the initial review meeting, the entry in the first column is likely to be Not Yet Achieved (NYA). The student should be prepared to discuss with you and the practice tutor why s/he has assessed her/himself at the stated level for each skill. It is important that your discussion is open and honest, and identifies the student’s strengths and learning needs.

Following the three way discussion you should make a judgement about the Level of Practice that best reflects the student’s performance, for each of the skills or field specific competencies. Enter the level (NYA, DS, IS, I) against each skill or field specific competency, in the column ‘Supervisor assessed’ (KYN117 portfolio) or Mentor assessed (KYN237 portfolio). It is important that you make an entry against every skill or field specific competency.

Your assessment should be informed by:

• direct observation of the student’s practice
• review of the supporting evidence the student provides
• testimony from at least two different service users and/or carers
• feedback provided by others such as other qualified practitioners
• questioning and discussion with you.

A mentor in the student’s complementary/alternative practice learning environment will carry out the same process at the mid review meeting. At this stage your student may have reached the required performance level for some of the skills or competencies. A plan for the student’s ongoing development should be agreed and recorded on ‘post mid review meeting action plan’ page of the Ongoing Achievement Record.

At the final meeting you will make the summative judgement regarding your student’s attainment of the required level of practice. You complete the ‘Record of skills development and achievement’ in the same way that you did for the initial review meeting. If your student has not achieved the required level of practice in all the skills or competencies for the stage of the programme they are completing by the final meeting, it is important that the necessary arrangements are discussed with the Practice Tutor and put in place to optimise the student’s opportunity to meet the module’s practice requirements before the portfolio submission date. It is important that your student submits their portfolio by the specified date whether or not all portfolio requirements have been met. In such instances, following review by the Exam Board, the student may be offered further time in which to meet all practice assessment requirements.

The plan you agree with your student and the Practice Tutor should be recorded on the ‘Post final review meeting action plan’ page of the Ongoing Achievement Record.

Once you have completed your summative assessment you need to complete the ‘Summative assessment outcome – record of achievement of skills’.

Summative assessment outcome – record of required hours and experience

This page of the portfolio is used to confirm the total number of hours spent in practice by your student and the associated number of supervised hours provided by you and other mentors during the practice learning periods. Each practice module has a specific practice hours requirement. In addition another requirement within each practice module is that 40% of the practice hours are completed under direct supervision of a mentor. If the student does not complete the specified number of practice hours they will not meet the module’s assessment requirements and so will fail the module.

It is also important that the student and the OU have a record of the types of experience the student has gained, the service user groups in whose care they have been involved and learnt from, and the number of hours completed during this module. This is achieved by the student completing the ‘Record of experiences’ page.

Next section: Quality assuring learning in practice