CAVA Requirements: Who It's For and What You'll Need

CAVA is for people who assess vocational learners in workplace or training environments — NVQ assessors, apprenticeship assessors, and other professionals who make formal judgements about learner competence.

You do not need to be an experienced assessor before you start. The qualification is designed to develop your assessing practice — but you do need to be actively working in an assessing role, or moving into one, during the course.

CAVA is not suitable for people who only deliver training and have no assessing responsibilities. If your role is training rather than assessing, the AET is the more appropriate qualification.

As a CAVA candidate, you are expected to be engaging in real assessing activities during the qualification. This means: making assessment decisions about learners' competence, reviewing and providing feedback on learner evidence, and planning and conducting assessment activities.

You will build a portfolio of your own assessing practice — not a portfolio of your learners' evidence, but evidence of how you plan, conduct, and review your assessment decisions.

Your own assessor (the person assessing you for CAVA) will observe you assessing your learners, review your assessment records, and hold a professional discussion with you about your practice.

The most important practical requirement for CAVA is that you have access to real learners to assess. You need enough learners to demonstrate your assessing practice across different assessment methods.

Typically, you will need to demonstrate assessing competence in the workplace (observing learners performing work activities) and assessing knowledge and skills through other means (reviewing written evidence, questioning, professional discussion).

The exact number of learners required varies, but having a small caseload of active learners is essential — you cannot complete CAVA on assessment theory alone.

CAVA is not a short-course qualification. Unlike the AET (which runs over three days), CAVA is a Certificate-level qualification with more substantial evidence requirements.

Most candidates take several months to complete CAVA, depending on how quickly they can build and document their assessing caseload.

The time commitment is spread across your working role — you are doing your job as an assessor and evidencing that practice for the qualification at the same time.

There is no fixed number of taught hours. Support from your assigned assessor is available throughout, but the pace is largely driven by how actively you are working with learners.

There are no formal academic entry requirements for CAVA. You do not need prior qualifications in education or assessment.

You do need to have the occupational competence to assess in your chosen area — you need to know your subject well enough to make valid judgements about whether a learner is meeting the required standards.

Good literacy and record-keeping skills are important, as assessment documentation is a significant part of the role.