The Diploma represents a big change in 14-19 education. While the delivery of general qualifications has in the past largely involved the learners and staff of a single school or college, Diploma delivery relies on teamwork and collaboration across centres working in consortia. One area where robust and common working practices will be critical is internal assessment.

The Diploma qualifications have a significant element of controlled internal assessment, with the majority of principal learning units being internally assessed. Consequently, ensuring the quality of internal assessment will be key to ensuring the quality of the Diploma as a qualification. It is essential that consortia recognise at the outset of Diploma delivery the challenges related to delivering high quality internal assessment in the context of a consortium.

Senior managers in Diploma consortia, those responsible for the delivery of individual lines of learning and those responsible for quality assuring assessment practice across a consortium will be able to find information in this section of the website on delivering internal assessment within a consortium and advice on managing this assessment.

Two roles have been developed to help ensure high quality internal assessment, whatever the size of a consortium and whatever Diploma provision it offers - the domain assessor and the lead assessor. These two strategic roles, along with the full commitment of consortium management, will serve to underpin standards. Delivering the Diploma: a training guide for lead and domain assessors provides detailed information on the competencies, skills and knowledge required to carry out these roles.

Many of the tasks and responsibilities that they encompass are already required for existing qualifications. So it should be possible to take current good practice and apply it to the management of the Diploma qualifications. Consortia are therefore strongly advised to put these roles in place in order to meet existing requirements and to enable the development of good practice in Diploma internal assessment.