TAQA stands for Training, Assessing and Quality Assurance. Despite its widespread use amongst the teaching and assessing industry as the title of a course, this is actually incorrect and misleading.
It is in fact an acronym for a suite of qualifications in:
· Training
· Assessing
· Quality Assurance
The training part of the acronym represents teaching qualifications. The gold standard for teaching others within the workplace is the Level 3 Award in Education and Training. This replaced its predecessor PTLLS and is a nationally accredited, Ofqual regulated teaching qualification. It qualifies people to teach others in subjects they themselves are qualified and competent in. Experienced trainers may also progress on to the Level 4 and 5 Education and Training qualifications.
Assessing consists of the various nationally accredited assessing qualifications for both workplace and vocational environments. These are:
· Level 3 Award in Assessing Competence in the Work Environment (ACWE) – designed for those responsible for assessing colleagues in the work environment
· Level 3 Award in Assessing Vocationally Related Achievement (AVRA) – designed for those assessing people in a vocational/training environment
· Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA) – designed for those responsible for assessing in both the workplace and training environments
As you will see above, these individual assessing courses also have their own abbreviations/acronyms, the most commonly used being the term CAVA. The CAVA course is the gold standard for the assessing suite of qualifications and was previously known as the A1. Since the launch of the TAQA terminology, many individuals and organisations refer to the CAVA course as TAQA. This causes quite a bit of confusion for those outside of the assessing industry, particularly when people turn to Google to search for the most suitable assessing qualification for them.
The final part of the TAQA suite is Quality Assurance. This refers to both internal and external quality assurance qualifications. The Level 4 Award in the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practice qualifies individuals to sign off and confirm the competency of fellow assessors. This is an important qualification for those looking to set up a new centre with an awarding body. External Quality Assurance courses are for those looking to work in a quality role within awarding bodies.
So to emphasise the key objective of this blog, TAQA is a suite of qualifications and not the name of an individual course. The main assessing qualification is the Level 3 Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement (CAVA).
We hope you have found this blog useful, please get in contact if you have any questions regarding any of the above.
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