News & Updates

STA would like to reiterate the roles, responsibilities, and procedures regarding STA assessment materials.

ATCs must maintain the confidentiality of assessment materials throughout the entire course process. It is their responsibility to ensure all procedures are followed and the assessment is undertaken in accordance with the assessment strategy.

Assessment materials will be sent by STA in a sealed envelope two weeks prior to the course start date to either the course venue, centre co-ordinator or course tutor. The assessment materials still within the sealed envelope must be stored in a safe and secure designated location until the start of the assessment. Therefore, it is paramount that the correct despatch location is selected when registering a course and that an appointed person is made aware that they will be arriving to acknowledge receipt and store safely and securely.

Assessment materials are sent next working day delivery via Royal Mail or DPD and require a signature. If an ATC has not received assessment materials, STA must be notified as soon as possible, as STA are able to track delivery receipts. If a successful delivery was made to the despatch location provided, ATCs are required to locate the assessment materials.

If in the rare occurrence where delivery was unsuccessful and all procedures were followed by the ATC, STA will investigate accordingly and reissue assessment materials.

The assessment envelope must not be opened until the assessment is ready to begin and must be done in front of the learners. Under no circumstances should assessment papers be issued to learners to complete at home / in their own time or assessment papers permitted to leave the assessment room. If there is a problem with the assessment papers, STA must be contacted immediately for advice and guidance.

On completion of the assessment, all MCQ assessment question papers must be securely destroyed or returned to STA. ATCs, tutors, assessors or learners must not retain MCQs assessment papers / assessment materials. Approved Training Centres must keep the Learner Answer Papers and Tutor Marking Schemes for quality assurance activities.

To support ATCs and tutors with the procedures please see the qualification assessment strategies and STA Multiple-Choice Question Assessment Paper Guidance document which are available on STA Online as well as the MCQ assessment training video available here.

Late Registration

ATCs should try where possible to register a course with at least two weeks’ notice. STA appreciate that sometimes last-minute bookings are unforeseen, and STA will continue to support ATCs with this. However, for any courses that are registered within 2 working days of the course assessment date, there is a late fee of £30.00 to cover next day delivery fees. This applies to any course which requires a multiple-choice assessment (MCQ) paper.

If a course is registered with less than 2 working days’ notice, or if an ATC does not want to pay postage fees, they will need to use the online assessment system Cirrus. Cirrus is an e-assessment specialist with electronic invigilation which allows learners to complete the MCQ assessment online. The system has a built-in invigilation as well as records the assessment, therefore once an assessment has been completed, it will be marked, and results issued automatically without the need for a second marker. The results are transferred to STA Online without any paperwork, scanning or second marking.

STA is unable to authorise any requests for assessment materials to be emailed to ATCs due to the risk of breaches of confidentiality of assessment. Therefore, ATCs must follow the above procedures to ensure assessment materials arrive and are stored safely and securely ready for the course start date. If ATCs have not followed these procedures resulting in assessment materials being unavailable for the intended course, the course must be rearranged.

If these procedures are not followed or confidentiality of assessment materials are not maintained, STA will void the assessment as it will not be a valid assessment and sanctions will be applied to the ATC and or tutor as necessary.

Please see below a summary table of roles, responsibilities and procedures regarding assessment materials. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.