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Help shape the future

of learning and assessment

 

Our Assessment Innovation Fund

Get up to £100,000 of funding to bring your assessment design ideas to life.

We’re dedicated to promoting and advancing learning – it’s our core purpose.

This purpose drives our commitment to deliver world-class educational services that enable learners to achieve their potential. We also believe that great innovation needs great collaborators. That’s why we’ve launched our Assessment Innovation Fund.

Over the next 12 months, we’ll be investing £1million worth of funding to support you in piloting new and innovative approaches to assessment. This includes testing out brand-new ideas and exploring the use of technology.

We want to support you in developing your ideas for better assessment that meets the needs of learners and educators today.

Applications for phase 1 funding now closed

We're offering up to £100,000 to fund two pilots as part of our next phase. We want to hear from you if you think you can help develop new and innovative assessment solutions that meet the evolving needs of the education sector.

Phase 2 applications open on 25 October – check back in to submit your application. 

Interested in transforming assessment?

Just follow these simple steps. 

Step 1: Download application guide 

Step 2: Download application form 

Step 3: View draft contract to see terms and conditions 

Step 4: Submit completed application form to [email protected]. 

What happens next for successful applicants?

If you’re successful, you’ll be allocated an NCFE colleague who will work closely with you through the pilot of your idea. They will: 

  • Support you through the contracting process  
  • Help with developing a project plan   
  • Work with you to develop project milestones  
  • Interact with you on a regular basis   
  • Encourage accountability based on evidence and impact   
  • Ensure an evaluation process is in place.  

Ultimately, they’ll help make sure you have the support you need to effectively pilot your idea. 

What we’re looking for 

We want to hear from you if you think you can help transform assessment and provide solutions that: 

  • Deliver a transformational learning and assessment experience for all learners 
  • Consider meta and technical skills development to enable learners to develop agency 
  • Enable personalisation in assessment 
  • Develop an assessment system that is fair and inclusive by design and moves away from high stakes, stressful exams where appropriate to do so 
  • Provide balance and interplay of formative and summative assessment 
  • Implement technology to make assessment more readily available and fit for purpose 
  • Build a real-time picture of the impact of the learning     
  • Use data and technology in insightful and efficient ways to enable high quality teaching, learning and assessment 
  • Use data more effectively to improve the level of perceived value of assessment processes, as a means of enabling choice and informing every stage of the learning journey. 
Who can apply for funding? 

We’d love to hear from: 

  • Training providers   
  • Qualification developers  
  • Awarding organisations  
  • Quality assurers   
  • Ed tech organisations  
  • Colleges 
  • Other organisations interested in changing the future of assessment. 
What if your application is unsuccessful?

Don’t feel discouraged if you don’t succeed on your first application. We’re committing to support ideas that, with a bit of extra help from us, have the potential to go the distance. We’ll help you work through some of the extra detail needed and encourage you to make a second application for funding. 

Whatever stage your idea is at, if you think it’s something special, apply as part of our next funding round. 

More information 

Speak to a member of our team by emailing us at [email protected].