Services
Professional Assessments
For professionals you can have confidence in.
Measuring the competence and real-life capabilities of a workforce, particularly in relation to high-risk, specialist professions that require a unique skillset and knowledge base, should be essential. If you’re looking to drive the standards within your industry or organisation, we have the expertise to help you to design, develop and deliver tailored assessments that meet the key quality indicators you require.
Our flexible approach means we can support you with a tailored solution for your assessment needs. This could be as part of a wider qualification offered by Kaplan Assessments, or as a standalone assessment.
We've over 60 years combined experience in all aspects of assessment, anything from a micro credential or badge, through to high-stakes professional assessments across medical, legal and other professional services sectors.
We focus on the real-life application of industry-specific assessments, aiming to identify key gaps within professional roles and encourage professional development. A formal certificate of achievement is not only a measurement of competence and a demonstration of commitment but it enables candidates to unlock their potential and improve their career prospects.
Designing our professional assessments
You might be starting with a blank piece of paper. You may already have a well-formulated picture for the design or your assessment. Either way, we will work with you to ensure your tailored assessment achieves your objectives.
Content Validity
We always start with the competencies. What knowledge and skills does a professional need to be able to apply, and in what situations? The answer will determine what an assessment needs to measure for an individual to demonstrate their ability in a profession.
Through extensive industry analysis and working with experts who are competent in their given profession, we build a full understanding of the key aspects of the role to help determine these competencies and ensure the validity of the assessment. We use a variety of tools including surveys, job task analysis, stakeholder engagement and interviews with experts.
Different competencies are best suited to different methods of assessment. Kaplan Assessments has expertise in a wide range of assessment methods:
- Multiple choice tests (MCTs) and other Objective Test style questions
- Short and long-form written answer questions
- Structured clinical examination (OSCE) style assessments and other simulated case studies
- Workplace assessment - evidence gathering from on the job completion
Reliability and accuracy
Where confidence that professionals are competent in their job is key, successful candidates must earn the right to be in the role they perform. We are experts in designing tailored assessments that reach the gold standard in key quality indicators.
Diversity and Inclusion
All candidates must have a fair chance of being able to demonstrate competence and capability in their chosen career. Our approach ensures that diversity and inclusion are considered at all stages of assessment design, development and delivery. We place equality of opportunity at the heart of all decisions around assessment methodology and content.
Developing our professional assessments
Stakeholder confidence is of paramount importance in the wholesale change of assessment regimes. When we partner with large regulatory bodies such as the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the development stage helps to keep everyone aligned.
Content excellence
To create a truly excellent assessment takes a deep understanding of both assessment methodology and the subject matter being tested. That’s why we use leading subject matter experts to write the assessment questions, with a focus on the key competencies relevant to your specific professional sector or industry. Our assessment experts work with them to convert their subject matter knowledge into high quality questions. We have the capability and understanding to work with subject experts across all professions.
Pilot
Where required, we can pilot the tailored assessment for you to shape the design that best achieves your objectives:
- Is it at the right level?
- Does it determine the intended outcomes?
- Are there any unexpected consequences?
After the pilot we get feedback from all parties, including candidates. We analyse every aspect of the statistical outcomes and present our findings. Piloting gives some assurance of outcomes before opening up a new assessment and can be crucial where stakeholder management is key to the success of a new assessment regime.
On-going monitoring and improvement
In a fast paced professional environment, assessments need to evolve. We use our expertise to monitor changes in professional competencies, adapting our assessments to keep up with changes in practice and meet the evolving skills needs of the sector.
Accessibility
The development approach to our tailored assessments and qualifications is designed to pre-empt the accessibility requirements for as many participants as possible. The concept of building adjustments in holistically ensures varying needs are routinely catered for which effectively avoids the need for reasonable adjustments and automatically making assessments and qualifications more accessible.
- Plain language – ESOL, Cognitive disabilities, Autism, Dyslexia
- Font/typeface – Vision impairment, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Age
- Use of abbreviations – ESOL, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Autism, Cognitive disabilities
- Physical positioning (per station) – Physical assessments cater for varying physical abilities, uncrowded spaces for Autism
- Physical height (station) – Lower for wheelchair users, height impairment
- Paper contrast/colour – Vision impairment, Dyslexia, Autism
- Captions on videos – Hearing impairment
- Varied representation to reduce stereotypical assumptions – Use of varying minority groups in physical assessments to normalise
For example, the use of plain language, increased font size, font and page contrasting and limited use of abbreviations can habitually support candidates with disorders which may include cognitive disabilities, vision impairment, and English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).
Delivering our professional assessments
Having delivered many large scale, high stakes professional assessments with candidates from around the world, you can count on our operational excellence to ensure they run smoothly and effectively for every candidate, regardless of location or needs.
Our experience and flexibility enables us to provide a variety of ways to support the delivery of assessments, even those that have not been developed by Kaplan Assessments.
Tailored delivery mechanisms
We work with a variety of partners so that we can deliver your exact requirements without being constrained by any specific platform.
We’ll tailor the right delivery mechanisms and can support fixed date and on-demand exams, sat within a test-centre, or via remote invigilation, as required.
Test-centre locations
We’re able to host computer-based assessments at Kaplan locations across the UK. The network provides over 600 seats and supports the current delivery of around 80,000 exams annually across 20 locations. We even have our own purpose built face to face skills assessment facility in London.
We also partner with test-centre providers such as PearsonVUE and ITSS, where further UK or global capacity is required. Partnerships of this type have enabled us to successfully deliver MCT assessments for the Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS) to over 3,000 candidates a year. The new Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) is also delivered on this basis, which will ultimately reach in excess of 13,000 MCT assessments every year.
Remote invigilation
All of our platform partners have remote-proctoring facilities that can be deployed as and when required, either instead of test-centre delivery or as an addition to it.
Assessment Security
Assessment security is crucial to the integrity of any high stakes assessment. It becomes ever more important as new and more sophisticated methods to try to undermine that integrity are used. We complete rigorous identity checks and have stringent security precautions including secure encryption systems, and the use of software to detect cheating.
Diversity and Inclusion
We work to promote equality of opportunity in delivery. We can make a full range of reasonable adjustments to the way assessments are delivered whilst still making sure that all candidates are assessed against the same competencies required for the job.
Operational capability across the entire candidate journey
We're able to provide solutions for the full end-to-end delivery of the candidate journey and administration of assessments. This can include:
- Website with online portal and account management
- Candidate contact centre
- Candidate registration, assessment booking and payment
- Scheduling and delivery of assessments
- Processing and handling of results
Our experienced team goes out of their way to support candidates during the assessment process, ensuring they have clear information, know what to expect beforehand, and are as relaxed as possible on the day.
Our capabilities aren’t limited to professional assessments and in many cases, we support organisations to design, develop and deliver professional qualifications as part of the same solution.
