Senior Manager Of Assessment

Senior Manager of Assessment AQA Guildford

Purpose:

The Senior Manager of Assessment leads and performance manages a team of Assessment Managers, Assessment Support Managers and/or Assessment Coordinators and is part of the Assessment Management Leadership Team. They are accountable for ensuring all activities relating to the assessment cycle for each subject are planned, monitored, measured, and managed effectively to deliver to customers and achieve Assessment’s objectives, and quality assure the work of their team to ensure error-free assessment materials.

This role is accountable for the implementation of assessment quality activities within the subject group. They work closely with colleagues across Assessment Management ensuring consistency and process adherence across all subject groups. They maintain strong links to other teams in Assessment, Associate Services, Operations, Standards and Awarding, Incident Management and Customer & Product teams. They will use their assessment, product and process knowledge to feed into wider business work to ensure AQA’s assessments are fit-for-purpose and appeal to customers.

The role is a point of escalation for any issues that might impact the quality of an assessment or our ability to deliver accurate results to students and will represent the Assessment Leadership Team in projects and strategic initiatives around the business to champion assessment quality and best practice.

Landscape:
Each year over 2000 question papers, assessment artefacts, mark schemes and modified large print papers are created, quality assured and sent to press for domestic and international qualifications by teams across Assessment. These materials are sat by 100,000s of students across three examination series and are pivotal part of their next step in education. The Assessment Management team sits within Assessment and is accountable for the end-to-end quality of all assessment materials from initial planning and creation to marking and awarding of results.

Working with senior associates, they ensure they are error-free, valid, reliable and comply to strict regulatory conditions and implement improvements from robust analytical reviews. The team provide subject-assessment expertise on GQ qualifications to AQA to support work on redevelopment and reform as well as any external regulatory work. They work closely with internal teams across Assessment and COO as well as the wider business to champion assessment quality and best practice.

Assessment Management is split into 7 subject groups;
English, Maths, Science, Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts and Technology and Languages. The Senior Manager of Assessment role sits within one of these subject areas and reports to the Head of Assessment Management, working closely with other Senior Managers and Subject Assessment Leads.

Activities:

• Lead and manage the allocation of work across the subject group and the processes that are followed, looking to continuously improve them.
• Provides regular progress reports and ensures action plans are in place to manage delivery and resource effectively.
• Responsible for risk and issue management for the creation of assessment materials.
• Recruit and performance manage a team to ensure strong personal performance with high quality outcomes, good cultural fit and personal development.
• Provide coaching and support to Assessment Support Managers.
• Quality check the work of Assessment Managers, Assessment Support Manager and Assessment Coordinators (where applicable) to ensure high quality is delivered and feedback provided.
• Work with the Customer & Product teams to understand what customer expectations are, and with the Assessment Manager/Assessment Support Manager to create assessments that meet these expectations whilst still complying with all regulatory conditions.
• Contribute to leadership across the Assessment area and work closely with the Head of Assessment Management to determine and monitor activity, budget and resources needed, including for strategic activity.
• Act as a point of internal escalation for issues related to assessments, using knowledge and expertise to provide the right outcomes.
• Act…