The case for the formative and summative evaluation of training courses is presented prior to focusing upon the development of two new measures designed to gauge the efifectiveness of a short course of training. Results derived from these two measures are presented from two successive English National Board 953 courses (‘Developments in Psychiatric Nursing’). The findings indicated that our measures were reliable and valid indices of learning and so could facilitate formative evaluation. However, in terms of summative evaluation the post‐course scores were low and so the case for a revised course was presented. Implications were drawn for the routine evaluation of post‐qualification