Assessment FAQs

Assessment criteria

Assessment visits and contacting schools

Assessment portal

 

 

Assessment criteria

Can I assume that all the applications I have been allocated have met criteria in Part One?

No. You still need to check the information in Part One to see if the applicant has met the national benchmark criteria and sense-check the data contained for mistakes. Please refer to pages 3-7 of the Assessment Guidance for Round 12.

 

Can trips to the theatre, art galleries etc count towards the number of extra-curricular opportunities?

No. Valid extra-curricular arts activities must take place for a minimum of 6 weeks; either spread throughout the academic year or as one half term. Singular trips to arts events are therefore not applicable.

 

Can LA music services be counted as a valid arts partner?

Yes, where additional information can be provided. Where a partner is brokered by another organisation (in most cases we anticipate this will be the local authority but may apply to other organisations), we require the name of the artists/musicians delivering the activity. If these have not been stated you will need to request them at the assessment visit.

Where a music service has provided an endorsement letter in Part Two (Question 5.3 and 5.4), again this should be a named artist who has sustained work within the setting, and not the Head of the music service.

This is applicable to all local authority and broker organisation arts partnerships.

 

Part Two, Question 1.3. should all art forms be covered here and should the answer refer to local, national and international?

A number of assessors and moderators have flagged concerns that this question, in general, has not been answered very well. Please request additional evidence to reference all arts forms, local, national and international perspectives if necessary, but please be mindful that leniency may be required. The Artsmark team is aware this question may pose problems for assessment and will look to clarify this question for round 13 onwards.

 

Part Two, Question 3.2 (Artsmark Gold) Should the benefits of CPD in the arts be restricted to arts staff?

We do not state that the benefits of arts related CPD can only be experienced by the designated arts staff within a setting. Therefore if the benefits detailed are for teachers from other subject areas, but feedback from these staff is evidenced, and the artform minimum is met, this is fine.

 

If I identify an area as missing or incomplete from a statement, which is subsequently found on the visit, how can the school alter or add to their original statement or is it just up to me to include it in my assessment statement and then update the 'pass' indicator on the electronic form?

In most cases it will be the role of the assessor to include any new evidence gained in the assessment comment for that question. Please refer to page 26 of the Assessment Guidance for Round 12.

For agreed late submissions and extreme cases you may wish to return the form to the applicant to input a considerable amount of new information but in the tight assessment timeframe it is not advisable for the majority of applications. Please contact the Artsmark team to discuss this option if you feel an applicant needs to drastically amend their application.

 

Assessment visits and contacting schools

 

When should I contact schools?

We would advise that you contact schools as soon as possible, ideally before the half term break, to book in provisional dates. Most schools break up for half term on Friday 10 February and as all assessment must be completed by 23 March you will need to leave ample time for the school to prepare any additional evidence that is requested for the visit.

 

My contract states that I am required to have adequate Public Liability Insurance – please can you give me some advice as to where and how I go about getting this cover?

Unfortunately the Artsmark team are not permitted to offer advice in this area as we do not have the expertise or authority to do so. It is a standard term of Arts Council England contracts for external service providers that organisations and individuals have the appropriate insurance to undertake the contracted role, and as such cannot be removed.

 

Assessment portal

I am having trouble accessing the portal, please help.

We’ve had a number of queries from assessors who have been unable to view their allocation in the Artsmark portal. To clarify, the portal is hosted separately from the Artsmark website so you should not use the same details to access both.

 

Each assessor has a unique login (consisting of either your valid email address e.g. name@domain.com or in some cases, ‘Assessor:name@domain.com’ and a password) – these have been emailed via mail merge to all assessors, but please contact the team if you have not received these details.

 

You will need to log in with the generic details that have been emailed previously:

Username – assessor

Password – Criteria2012

 

I have opened an application from my In Tray, but when I log in a second time the form has disappeared. Where is it?

The In Tray acts as just that; it is a record of the forms we have ‘sent’ to you through the system you for assessment.

Once you have clicked into a form in the In Tray it becomes a form that you are working on and so moves to the Saved Forms tab, it will stay here until you submit it back to the Artsmark team for moderation.

 

 

 

 

I can only view one application – the rest in my list will not open correctly. How can I view alternative applications?

Please ensure that you use the action buttons contained within the portal to view applications and refrain from using the Back and Forward buttons on your browser. You will find these at the top of the any page within an application form.

 

 

You must click ‘Exit’ to leave a form and enable you to open up another one from your In Tray/Saved forms records.

 

What does ‘Send to Next Stage’ mean?

There are two options under this function:

  • Return to applicant – If you need or wish to return a form to an applicant to provide further evidence you should select this option
  • Submit – Once you have completed the full assessment for this application you should select this option so that the form can pass through to the assessment complete/moderation allocation stage.

Please note: At present there is no workaround for forms that are accidentally submitted at assessment stage. Please do not submit your assessed form until you are happy that all your comments have been included and assessment is complete.

 

How do I view attached evidence as part of an application?

In order to view attachments that are included as answers to questions in Part 2, you’ll need to retrieve them from the portal.

To do so, please open the relevant question in the application, and click the button to retrieve the file.

 

 

 

You will be prompted to Open or Save the document, we’d suggest you do both.

Please note: the file type is noted at the end of the document name and depending on the file type – you may require certain software to open the file. In most case we would expect the attachments to be Word or Excel documents, or PDFs, but in some cases you may get a rogue file type!

 

I have tried to retrieve an attachment from an Artsmark application, but I cannot open the file.

Please check the file extension of the attached document. As noted above, you may need a specific programme to open a file e.g for a file that ends .pdf you will require a version of Adobe Reader.

If you do not have the correct programme to view the file it may be possible to download a free version of it in order to do so – please see individual manufacturer’s websites.

We do not advise that you pay for any software that requires a fee payable e.g. Microsoft Publisher.

If you do not have a programme and cannot obtain a free version, please request the school provide an alternative format of the document, or a hard copy be made available at the assessment visit.

If this is not possible, the Artsmark team will consult ACE IT department and/or external service providers of the portal to convert documents into accessible formats.