--- title: "How Do You Prove a Training Programme Actually Worked?" description: "Attendance proves a course happened. Proving it worked means measuring the same capabilities on the same people before and after, reporting the gain only on those who completed both, and publishing who dropped out. The sequence, the four kinds of evidence compared, and what it costs in USD — written for Singapore and Malaysia." canonical: https://www.assessall.com/solutions/prove-training-worked-singapore-malaysia source: AssessAll --- # The levy paid for the training. What proves it changed anything? Proving a training programme worked is the decision of what evidence would change your mind about running it again. It is answered by measuring the same capabilities on the same people before and after the programme, reporting movement only for participants who completed both ends, and publishing the drop-out alongside the gain rather than behind it. ## What goes wrong today - **Completion is the metric because completion is the metric that exists** — Attendance is captured automatically, so it becomes the report. It answers a funding question — did the training take place, and can we claim for it — and it is the correct evidence for that question. It is simply not evidence about capability, and a board that asked whether people can now do the thing has not been answered. - **The happy sheet measures the trainer, not the training** — A reaction form at the end of the last session records how the room felt about the experience. Reaction is the first of Donald Kirkpatrick's four levels — reaction, learning, behaviour, results — and the model's own point is that the first level does not predict the ones underneath it. An enjoyable course and an effective course are different findings and most programmes only ever collect the first. - **The post-only test cannot tell learning from selection** — Testing after the programme tells you where the cohort ended up. It cannot tell you what the programme contributed, because you never measured where they started — and the people who show up on the last day are not a random sample of the people who showed up on the first. - **Nobody wants to be the one who measures it properly** — A paired design can return a null result, and a null result is a difficult meeting. That is precisely why it is worth something: a measurement that could only ever have produced good news was never a measurement. The compensating fact is that a null result on one competency is usually accompanied by a real gain on another, which is a redesign brief rather than a verdict. ## What AssessAll does - **Learning Journeys — baseline, during, outcome** — A journey sequences the assessments around a programme in stages: a baseline before it starts, optional checkpoints during, and an outcome wave after. The same competencies are carried through, so the comparison is between two readings of one thing rather than between two different tests. - **Gain computed on matched pairs, by design** — A participant contributes to a gain figure only when they have both a baseline and an outcome attempt. Unmatched attempts are counted and reported separately — outcome-only participants who cannot show gain, and baseline-only participants who started and never finished — so drop-out is visible in the report rather than hidden inside an average. - **Effect sizes, and the refusal to report one** — The impact report carries a paired Cohen's d alongside the raw gain, so movement is expressed against how much participants varied rather than in bare percentage points. Below three matched pairs the effect size is withheld and the report states why, rather than printing a number that a reader would over-trust. - **Per-competency movement, not one headline number** — Each competency the instrument measures gets its own reading: baseline mean, outcome mean, gain, effect size, how many participants below the pass threshold at baseline crossed it, and how many declined. A programme that moved one competency and not another is a design finding, and a single average would erase it. - **Non-improvers named at participant level** — The report flags every participant whose score did not improve, with their baseline, outcome and checkpoint completion beside it. That list is the follow-up action; a cohort average is not something you can do anything about on Monday. - **Cost figures marked as your inputs, not our findings** — Supply a programme cost and headcount and the report returns cost per participant and cost per point of gain — with a note stating in plain words that those figures are your inputs and are not measured by the platform. Cost per point of gain is withheld entirely when the gain is zero or negative, because a programme that did not move the needle has no meaningful cost per point. - **360° cycles that re-measure against the earlier one** — For behaviour rather than knowledge, a follow-up 360° cycle is linked to its predecessor and the reports show change against it — the same paired logic applied to observed behaviour, for programmes whose claim is about how someone leads rather than what they know. - **How the attribution was decided, on the report** — Every attempt is tied to a stage by an explicit, ranked rule — its own share link where one exists, otherwise the assessment sitting in exactly one stage, otherwise the participant's own chronology with the earliest attempt as baseline. Which rule fired, and for how many attempts, is printed in the method note so a reader can judge the evidence rather than trust it. ## Use cases - Levy-funded corporate training in Malaysia where the board wants a capability reading and not a claim summary - SkillsFuture-supported programmes in Singapore reporting to a sponsor who asked what changed - Training providers who want an outcome number in the proposal rather than a testimonial - Leadership programmes measured by a follow-up 360° cycle against the first one - Compliance and conduct training where completion is mandatory and judgement is the actual objective - Shared-services and GBS hubs proving an upskilling programme before scaling it across sites - Pilot cohorts that have to earn the budget for the full rollout --- Source: https://www.assessall.com/solutions/prove-training-worked-singapore-malaysia