UCLES' orginal work in distance education began in 1994 in partnership with the Department of Adult and Continuing Education in the Namibian Ministry of Education and Culture, providing courseware for the many adults in the region who were unable to obtain access to full-time schooling, but who sought appropriate educational experiences and qualifications. In response to its experiences in Namibia, UCLES decided in 1995 to establish a South African based project, the Cambridge Open Learning Project (COLP). COLP marries the organisational support and experience of two major world-wide operators, Cambridge University Press and CIE. In this project quality assurance development and delivery of courseware has been ensured by using writers, revisers, editors and vetters to provide the widest possible inputs from experts in the field in Namibia, South Africa and the UK. In return for providing low cost, high quality courseware, COLP requires partner organisations to sign up to providing appropriate support infrastructures to students. In buying into COLP materials centres also get access to end-of module assignments that have been written by experienced assessors to enable benchmarking of learner progress against an international standard. Materials now exist in a number of subjects for CIE's IGCSE and HIGCSE qualifications. In line with the recent trends in global education CIE has also diversified its development beyond formal assessment and certification, into diagnostic assessment. The launch of Checkpoint, a new testing service in Science, Maths and English, aimed at students of approximately 14 years of age, has given CIE the springboard from which to offer similar services to complement its range of certificated products.