The work for this occasional paper began at a meeting of several of the special interest groups (SIGs) of the Health Sciences and Practice Subject Centre (HSP) of the UK Higher Education Academy in November 2009. It was led by the Assessment SIG with participants from the Critical Reflection, e- Learning, Ethics, Practice Learning and Support, and Problem-Based Learning SIGs. This one-day event, or SIGFEST as it came to be known, provoked a great deal of interest, reaching its maximum participant total soon after the release of initial publicity about the event.
The SIGFEST sought to examine the discourse of assessment for professional practice, to reveal tensions in assessment practices in the 21C where the aim is to ensure that graduate practitioners are fit for purpose and to identify the developmental priorities so that future assessment practice is robust and pragmatic. It enabled sharing of good practice within the 34 Health Sciences and Practice professions that form the main constituency of the Subject Centre.