Effective assessment enables the practitioner to understand what knowledge, skills and concepts the learner can demonstrate by saying, making, writing or doing and what they have misunderstood or not yet mastered. Once, the practitioner has analysed the data gathered from an assessment, decisions can be made about what the next steps in the learning process should be. Data analysis can be relatively simple for a class or group of learners or quite detailed and comprehensive for a whole cohort; for example NAPLAN or VCE exam analyses.

Assessment is ongoing and integrated in the teaching and learning cycle. Formal assessment tasks provide rich evidence about learning achievement that the practitioner then discusses with the learner when giving feedback about their performance. Ongoing informal assessment during classroom or group activities provides rich evidence from which the practitioner provides immediate feedback to the learner. This informal assessment and the feedback from it enable the practitioner to adjust their teaching strategies and the learner to adjust their learning strategies during the class or in the next session to promote further learning.

Assessment is more than forming judgements about a learner’s mastery of a body of curriculum content. It is monitoring the learner’s incremental understanding of the language, concepts and skills of a learning area or domain and what they need to do to succeed. The practitioner requires an understanding of how learning develops within a domain, what skills and knowledge learners need in order to progress and also what are the common misunderstandings that hinder learning.