Everyone’s talking about the new government’s curriculum and assessment review, but few have commented on the assessment aspect.
I will take it as read that the review leads to a principled, coherent, well-balanced iteration of the national curriculum, grounded in the best evidence on curriculum and pedagogy, a huge challenge in itself.
However, having overseen the Ofqual part of the last round of assessment reforms, and recognising the strengths and flaws in that process, I want to offer ten principles to guide the review away from pitfalls.
Clear assessment purposes
Be really clear about the purposes of assessment: who they are for and what they are meant to achieve. An assessment is only good if it is designed in a way that works well for its intended purposes.
For example, good stand-alone graded certification exams, competency tests, selection tests and accountability tests look very different from each other. They sample content domains in different ways, have different mark distributions and grading models and different levels of reliability.
Conflicts between purposes
Following from the above, there will have to be compromises if assessments have multiple uses, as they most often do. The more purposes that are hung on an assessment, the less well it can serve each one.
In particular, any test used for accountability is under so much pressure that many assessment methods become unworkable. This is one reason why many countries separate accountability tests and pupil certification.
Indirect purposes
Assessment isn’t just about valid and reliable outcomes. Well-designed assessments can encourage teachers to plan and teach a high-quality curriculum, motivate pupils to study, encourage retrieval and spaced practice and generate feedback that helps teachers improve curriculum and teaching.
Value for pupils
Minimise assessment that isn’t valuable for pupils. Assessment isn’t an ‘entitlement’ with intrinsic value; it is a means to achieving the intended purposes, most of which should have value for pupils.
For example, we need to think hard about the right assessments for the lowest-attaining 10 to 15 per cent. If a pupil will almost certainly go on to an entry level or Level 1 course post-16, a programme of GCSEs – even at foundation tier – may not motivate them through key stage four or generate results that convey what they know and can do.
There will be a difficult balance to strike here, and there are no easy answers. It’s a challenge every country faces, as must we.
Be realistic
The history of assessment is littered with debris from appealing ideas that cratered in practice and have inflicted real harm.
Coursework in GCSEs was a noble idea but it stripped out the curriculum (especially for lower attainers), created a workload behemoth for teachers and sometimes undermined teacher integrity, while pupil integrity cannot withstand the temptations of AI shortcuts.
Modularisation of qualifications undermined the deep learning that is founded on sustained building and consolidation of knowledge and skills, and turned secondary schooling for many pupils into a dreary and protracted exam crawl.
Skills-based qualifications in academic domains often led to narrowed curriculum. Conversely, overly-academic qualifications in practical subjects leave little space for valuable skills development.
And don’t get bogged down in equivalence, despite the attractions. This can lead to students being pushed into unsuitable curriculum and qualifications.
Keep it simple
Diplomas crashed and T levels have struggled in part because of their complexity. Too many hurdles make too many ways to fail. This is a real deterrent to students.
And don’t change things that don’t need changing.
Value technical expertise
There is no such thing as perfect reliability in marking or grading, however much people want it. There are superb assessment experts around, like the under-sung Michelle Meadows, seek them out, and believe what they say about what is realistically achievable.
They could also help avoid well-meaning efforts to assess skills sliding into rewarding inherent personality traits like extraversion.
Be balanced
Many subject experts will want to build high-profile topics and generic skills into subject plans. But if the same topics and skills are emphasised in each subject, it can lead to cumulative over-weighting of some elements across the whole curriculum, and a correspondingly skewed assessment profile. Plan a review of overall balance into the process to avoid this pitfall.
Join up from the start
Build in expertise in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment from the beginning. No one is an expert in all of these domains, and experienced classroom teachers need a bigger voice than last time round.
This will help shape assessments that incentivise and embed good curriculum and will work in the classroom in the hands of normally competent teachers without overloading them, as well as being technically sound.
Last time round a sequential process also did not bring in assessment expertise early enough. For example there were problems with GCSE RE because the accommodations negotiated by government with faith groups initially made for an unworkable qualification.
(And remember it takes time to write high-quality textbooks and other resources.)
Track the downsides
Perfection is not achievable. Some unintended consequences will be foreseen; others will emerge. Set up the mechanisms to monitor downsides from the outset and encourage flexing where it is clearly desirable.
A wider recommendation: Balance the system
Inspection is a good mechanism for spotting those downsides and balancing the system, but only if government allows inspection enough capacity to look beyond results, at the substance and integrity of what schools are doing.
Conversely, if inspectors are forced to lean too hard on published results, there will be powerful incentives to skew curriculum and teaching towards what is directly tested and away from everything else.
This has the potential to negate the value of the review, so don’t let this damaging pattern from the past repeat.
Overall, this curriculum and assessment review is a tremendous opportunity. Use it well.
