**Abstract**

Assessments in higher education remain a crucial method in which the student's understanding and engagement with the course content continue to be measured. Evidence suggests that effective assessments must not only enhance the student's learning, but it must also encourage the students to be able to recognize quality as well as improve their performance for future tasks. There are those who argue that because of the emphasis given to employability in the delivery of higher education, assessments are becoming increasingly simplistic and less innovative, leading to a fast-paced approach to studying, thus limiting student imagination and engagement. This paper explores the rationale and strategy of assessing first year students on a BA Health and Social Care degree, with specific focus on a core 30 credit units by reflecting on the changes made to the unit and the written assessment and evaluating the outcome of the changes using student performance, ending with the question: "*What is the point of assessments?'*

**Keywords:** health and social care, higher education, assessments, teaching and learning, student engagement
