Although PASTEL employs a battery of monitoring and evaluation tools, including group discussions (The PASTEL Client Panel, qualitative one-to-one feedback, Parent/Carer questionnaires and PASTEL Stakeholder Workshops, because of the nature of our clients and the desired soft skill outcomes, we have now added the extremely powerful medium of video diaries as a key tool to provide greatly enhanced evidence of progress with outcomes.

These video diaries and records have been liberally distributed throughout the PASTEL website. A sample can be accessed from the Home page.

PASTEL is required by the Open College Network (OCN) to provide evidence for standardisation if requested. This is to ensure consistency across all OCN training providers. Written permission is sought from Parent / Carers to use videos and photos as evidence of a clients achievements.

In their training workshops, clients work through the learning outcomes and assessment criteria in a logical order. This allows clients to build on what they have learnt from the previous task.

We make clear on all evidence what assistance/support clients have been given and where, as appropriate, what reasonable adjustments have been made. Where a client has a scribe for completing a task, then the scribe records verbatim notes.

Video evidence provides contextual information, such as how clients have participated, the ambience of the room, the tone of voice used and showed the level of support given to clients

Photographic evidence is annotated and clearly linked to the learning outcomes and assessment criteria.

We record evidence to show the clients contributions and demonstrate their understanding. The tasks should be straight forward, with some complexity, which the client can complete semi-autonomously with some support from the tutor, as appropriate.