You may have asked yourself 'what is the Mandatory Unit really about?'

At each level of ITQ there is a Mandatory Unit entitled Making Selective Use of IT. Let's remind ourselves of what the Mandatory Unit consists of.

Listen to Genny Dixon of e-skills UK who offers a description or read the transcript below.

The ITQ Mandatory Unit

Awarding Bodies offer assessment guidance for ITQ and many suggest specific prompts when considering the Mandatory Unit. City and Guilds, for example, advise ITQ candidates at Level 2 to 'explain the use of IT by describing 4 comprehensive tasks in detail'. Candidates should explain 'why you have used the particular software to do the job' and 'what functions it has that enabled you to include special features in one of the completed pieces, such as high contrast or large print text, or animation to increase audience interest.' Full guidance can be found in the accompanying document.

City and Guilds Centre Handbook

Evidence for the ITQ Mandatory Unit must be naturally occurring from IT activities undertaken for a specific and real purpose. This does not necessarily mean that candidates must be in paid employment. Read more about what constitutes real working environment in the e-Skills UK Statement.

e-skills UK Statement for the ITQ Mandatory Unit

The holistic journey to achieve the Mandatory Unit

Initially the ITQ candidate and assessor meet to discuss and make plans to achieve the required Units for ITQ and to agree on the types of evidence that will be produced. Quite naturally the Mandatory Unit would be discussed and the assessor advises which pieces of evidence gathered from the optional Units could be appropriate evidence to cross-reference to the Mandatory Unit. Professional Discussion is an ideal assessment method to assess the Mandatory Unit holistically.

Once all evidence for the optional Units has been gathered and assessed, the assessor and candidate meet for the Professional Discussion. The assessor could start the discussion by encouraging the candidate to explain the process of selecting applications to carry out the tasks being used for the Mandatory Unit. The assessor would then prompt the candidate to take over the conversation to clarify decisions she made about the selection of software, production of the documents, the presentation and the overall requirements of the organisation relating to all the evidence.

Let's look at Lucy Wong's example.

"I've nearly completed my ITQ and have to meet my assessor soon to carry out a Professional Discussion based on Unit 1, the Mandatory Unit.

I've already gathered 4 good pieces of evidence from other Units so I am going to talk through with my assessor why I created the documents and how they are going to be used.  

I know that I could have created a better-looking report so I will have plenty of feedback to start the discussion.

A Professional Discussion sounded a bit scary especially as it's going to be recorded as well. However my assessor has assured me that it will be an ideal opportunity to give her plenty of evidence to show her how I approach jobs at work and how I use IT to create and use documents. I think I will plan what I'm going to say so hopefully I won't be too nervous on the day!"

A view from a Training Provider:

"The Mandatory Unit ties the whole qualification together. In this unit the candidate needs to identify work they have produced for their portfolio, and discuss and explain it. This usually takes the form of a statement (Personal Testimony or Professional Discussion) in which the candidate clarifies what they have created, how and why they have created it."
Sheena Smith, ITQ Manager at Happy Computers.


It is essential at all three ITQ levels that the candidate should have a good opportunity to be briefed about the content and process of the Professional Discussion well in advance of the discussion taking place. Preparation is required on both sides to make sure that the time taken during the discussion is well spent.

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Last modified: 16 Oct 2007