This research was primarily concerned with the evaluation of the assessment procedures, particularly the practice-oriented assessment procedures, used to establish quality and certify standards within the School of Education Studies in Dublin City University, Ireland. To explore the quality assurance arrangements, systems and procedures in vocationally related education in Ireland it is important to put this in an overall national context. A recurring theme in the "quality" literature in education and training is the need to achieve consistency of judgement within diverse or complex systems. Hoyle (1994, 3) defines quality as: 'a degree of excellence, conformance with requirements, the totality of product or service features that satisfy given needs, fitness for use, freedom from defects, imperfections or contaminations and delighting customers'. This paper describes how educators in vocationally related education can adopt certain approaches to assessing student learning and understanding and thus create assessment mechanisms that can be regarded as quality assured. This paper is derived from research carried out in a the an Education & Training degree programme in the School of Education Studies at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland and also contributed to the Qual-Praxis project 2003-2006.