Moderation
What is Moderation?
CMRs Primary ITO is the Standard Setting Body for:
Moderation is a process of monitoring and evaluating
assessment documentation and decisions to ensure
that standards are applied validly and consistently to all
students.
CMR ID
Sectors
0018
Equine & Greyhound Racing
0022
Dairy and baking yeasts
0032
Horticulture
The Purpose of Moderation
0033
Meat
The purpose of moderation is to ensure that:
0037
Sports Turf
0052
Agriculture
0123
Seafood and Seafood maori
0179
Water
0185
Leather Manufacturing
*Domains/Unit Standards expiring
0228
Animal care
0232
Primary sector
• Assessments are consistent with the national
standard, fair and valid
• Assessors are making consistent judgments about
student or candidate performance.
Moderation is intended to ensure that regardless of
where an assessment was carried out for any particular
unit standard, the judgment made on the student
competence was fair, valid and of a reasonably consistent
standard when compared to assessments made
elsewhere.
Moderation exercises provide an ideal opportunity for
providers to obtain structured collegial feedback on
their teaching and assessment material. This should
either confirm that their tools meet industry standards
or will identify where improvements are needed to do so.
Who do we moderate?
All providers with consent to assess scope against any
unit standards for which Primary ITO is the Standard
Setting Body.
The quality management system requirements are
set out in Primary ITO’s Consent and Moderation
Requirement’s (CMR). Staff of consent to assess
providers are expected to be familiar with our CMRs.
Why do we undertake moderation?
Primary ITO must meet the New Zealand Qualifications
Authority’s quality assurance standards which are
outlined in their QA Standard for ITOs document.
Primary ITO demonstrates this to NZQA by:
• Implementing a national external moderation system
in accordance with the moderation information of our
registered CMR.
• Documenting national external moderation activities
and the results of these activities.
• Applying processes to ensure feedback from the
national external moderation activities is used in
review of our unit standards.
• Meeting annual NZQA national external moderation
reporting requirements.
• Regularly evaluating and reviewing its national
external moderation system.
• Periodically evaluating and reviewing the moderation
information to ensure that it meets NZQA registration
criteria and accords with best practice.
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Reporting
Primary ITO is responsible for evaluating the
effectiveness of its national external moderation system,
and for providing an annual report to NZQA.
Primary ITO uses a range of methodologies including
satisfaction surveys for industry, students and consent
to assess providers, informal feedback, review by quality
support team and moderators, and formal review to
evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of its national
external moderation system. Improvements are made
on the basis of this evaluation. An annual report is then
provided to NZQA.
Primary ITO’s internal Moderation System includes:
Assessor Moderation – Primary ITO moderators visit
a sample of assessors (Primary ITO staff assessors,
farmer trainers, workplace assessors) to moderate their
practical skills, assessment processes and decisions.
External Moderation
This process is run by Primary ITO to ensure national
consistency between Providers including public and
private tertiary education Providers, Industry Training
Organisations, Government Training Organisations,
Private Training Establishments and Schools.
Clusters
Our Responsibilities
The Quality Support Team manages plans and
coordinates all moderation events, reports moderation
outcomes, ensures Providers comply with moderation
requirements, and evaluates and reports on the
effectiveness of Primary ITO’s national external
moderation system.
The Quality Support Team including Moderators meet
annually to check moderate and peer review moderation
activities. Annual feedback is sought from each
moderator on the effectiveness of moderation activities
and suggestions for improvement to the system. This
feedback is then considered in our planning process for
the following year.
We also invite industry representatives with specific
expertise to advise and assist in moderation activities as
required.
Moderation Components
Moderation has two main components:
Providers are required to be involved in a local
external moderation system which is best achieved by
participating at Cluster meetings.
Clusters moderate a sample of their theory and practical
assessment materials and decisions, with others who are
involved in assessing against Primary ITO unit standards.
Primary ITO publishes a list Cluster dates at the start of
each year in the Focused on Quality Newsletter. Primary
ITO ensures a Quality Support member facilitates at
Clusters to provide advice and support and to record and
report on moderation outcomes. Primary ITO expects
consent to assess providers to attend and provider
assessment material for moderation Clusters in their
region.
Feedback to Primary ITO has indicated that Clusters
participation is valuable to consent to assess providers as
it provides opportunities to share ideas seek feedback,
network, and maintain currency with industry practice.
Provider Moderation
Internal Moderation
The ‘in house’ process of ensuring consistency with
the national standards and between assessors with a
provider.
Providers will have an internal moderation system
operating to ensure that the quality of their delivery and
assessment judgments are continually improving. This
should include Assessor/Tutor meetings, peer review
and self-review processes.
Primary ITO Quality Support Team visits a sample of
Providers to moderate their practical/theory skills,
assessment processes and decisions.
Providers selected for a visit are advised of the visit at the
beginning of each year by letter. A team of Moderators,
a pair of Moderators, or an individual Moderator
will conduct the visit depending on the amount of
assessment being undertaken and the nature of the unit
standards being assessed against.
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The intention of the visit is to ensure that moderation
outcomes from Clusters meetings and Moderation
Panels are actioned, and to facilitate the consent to
assess provider’s engagement in Primary ITO’s national
external moderation system. The visit is intended to
sample assessment practices and assessor decisions in
relation to practical unit standards, to provide support
and guidance for training delivery and assessment
against Primary ITO unit standards, and to foster
partnership between us and the consent to assess
provider.
and actions taken by the provider to bring their
assessment material and assessor decisions into line
with the national standard following moderation panel
feedback where minor improvements were required
as opposed to resubmission of assessment material,
assessment intention, etc…
Feedback is then provided in a report to the provider,
and any actions to bring about compliance with
moderation requirements are identified.
The expectation of Primary ITO is that all unit standards a
provider is assessing against will have been moderated at
least once over a two to five year time span (depending
on consent to assess scope). It is recommended that
approximately 20% of the unit standards the provider
assesses against that year are externally moderated
one way or another. This means that a provider who
assesses fifty (50) unit standards in any year should aim
to moderate at least ten (10) unit standards during that
year.
Moderation Panel Exercises
To ensure national consistency of theory based
assessment the Moderation Panel, to review samples of
assessments, marking schedules and student scripts.
To facilitate national consistency, the Quality Support
Team requests samples of assessment material and
student scripts from consent to assess providers for
selected unit standards. A panel of Moderators then
convenes to moderate the assessment material received.
The plan of the unit standards is to be sampled by the
Moderation Panel is published at the start of each year in
the Focused on Quality Newsletter which is emailed to all
consent to assess Providers as well as being published on
Primary ITO website.
Feedback and a moderation report (where applicable) is
then provided following these exercises to the Providers
who were asked to participate. Assessment material
that does not meet the national standard is required to
be resubmitted by a specified date for approval before it
can be used again.
Annual Moderation Report & Assessment Plan
Providers that have actively assessed against Primary ITO
unit standards in the previous year and plan to assess in
the following year are required to submit a moderation
report and/or assessment plan.
These reports are for providers to summarise their
engagement with Primary ITO’s national external
moderation system; it includes attendance at Clusters
The information from these reports provides Primary ITO
with an overview of compliance with its requirements
and the basis for reporting to NZQA, and it’s Board.
How much moderation do we undertake?
Compliance
All providers are expected to comply in the following
three ways:
• By participating in and reporting to Primary ITO, on
their involvement in local external moderation.
• Providing the Quality Support Team with assessment
samples if requested to participate in a Moderation
Panel Exercise.
• Participating in a practical skills moderation exercise if
requested to by Primary ITO.
Non-Compliance
Non-compliance by a provider will result in Primary ITO
initiating a process that may see it withdrawing
support for their continued consent to assess status
or in extreme cases initiating their de-registration as a
provider.
Where non-compliance is identified the Quality Manager
will specify the non-compliance and the corrective
actions to be taken within what time frame, in writing to
the non-compliant provider.
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Statement
Primary ITO recognises that moderation is an ongoing
process and welcome suggestions on how the current
system can be modified or improved. Primary ITO
wishes to work in partnership with providers to ensure
that support and feedback is available so that quality
standards are maintained across the industries for which
we have responsibility as a standards setting body.
Pre-Moderation of Assessment Material
Primary ITO strongly recommends that providers
use our assessment tasks where they are available for
the unit standards they are delivering. If we do not
have assessment tasks available then we are able to
moderate your assessments for you. Our fee for this
service is $120.00 per hour (+ GST). Please send your
assessment(s) for pre-moderation along with a covering
note advising how you would be using it to:
Quality Support Team
Primary ITO
PO Box 10383, The Terrace
Wellington
Or email us at quality@primaryito.ac.nz.
www.primaryito.ac.nz • 0800 20 80 20
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