How far away are we from radical assessment reforms in our schools?
I have surveyed over 20,000 teachers and have asked the question: ‘What is the greatest burden on teacher workload?’
In my work with schools across the UK, regardless of context, teachers are struggling under the marking burden. Day-to-day classroom assessment is fuelling problems with teacher mental health and wellbeing across the UK. Where marking and assessment has gone wrong is with an ever-increasing amount of testing and reporting. Add to the mix school accountability and tracking student progress, then the change in attainment between two points in time becoming a very fashionable measurement.
Does assessment improve a student’s performance?
Not only are some of our current methods of tracking student progress ineffective, but our obsession with data sets, edtech solutions and testing could also be damaging and limiting our students. This notion of ‘those most likely to succeed’ and ‘those most likely to fail’…
At a system level, our education leaders are ranking our schools, multi-academy trusts and in some cases, also inspecting them on top of statutory school inspection in order to drive performance. For schools, the apparent success of moving up the rankings secures more students and more funding – and so the cycle continues – but this measure of ‘value-added’ gives a false perception of teacher capability and student progress.
How can we find out what we don’t know?
Professor Rob Coe reminds us that “assessment must contain information that could surprise us and tell us something we do not already know” because if we report on what we already know, it tells us nothing new about what to do. My suggestion of how teachers and schools can buck this trend is to:
- Rethink homework
- Consider using comparative assessment in the classroom
- Use whole-class assessment strategies to test the learning
- Opt for verbal feedback instead of assuming written in the best form, and
- Consider artificial intelligence to reduce workload and use all of the above to improve the classroom.
Of course, whether our overuse of assessment is due to perceptions of effectiveness or the demands placed upon teachers and schools from elsewhere is slowly being evaluated. However, it is my belief that even if a school has a zero-marking or no-homework policy, their best intentions may still be trumped by external forces, for example, parental expectations, exam board regulations, Ofsted and national assessments.
God forbid it is your school leader who is the driving force? How schools strike a balance between accountability and autonomy is critical, and at the same time, we should also find out what makes for great teaching and how this translates into assessment and good outcomes for our young people.
Discover how your school can become a research-led institution and use some of these well -crafted ideas as part of a CPD programme to support teachers…
I sense that this is a post from the heart Ross, I hope this is recognised by those that read it.
I think we both are looking at a profession we love being torn apart by some mythical belief, empowered by technology and in the hands of those that least understand the power and the beauty that is in the relationship between teacher and pupil.
Looking at your ideas to “buck this trend” these are very much in line with my own where I call for education to get creative in doing what is right within the constraints of what we ‘have to do’. They are not radical nor are they difficult or expensive to implement. What they are is at the core of teaching and learning.
I really do not understand the political motive for pursuing something that is resulting in so many problematic issues, that is unless I miss-understand the aim. The current system is not working by any meaningful measure. Has it really improved performance or have we only tweaked what the performance indicators are? I believe that if we look at other indicators, we can clearly demonstrate what we are doing is not working, things like:
1) teacher retention
2) teacher and pupil mental health
3) exclusions
As to the how, how to show that there is another way we have to try, to subvert if necessary, and we have to find a narrative that people can buy into in order to find the support we need. We need to describe in plain terms what great teaching is and how it makes a real difference to achievement. We have to shine a beam on those examples we can find so others can see them too. I think great teaching starts with relationships, teachers building learning relationships with their pupils and then into the community. This will be difficult for we are starting from years, and generations of distrust, of a failed mantra based on the promises of rewards for compliance. By focusing on relationships we can create a sense of belonging, one of the most powerful of behaviour drivers, and from that trust.
My mantra – “Please Be Child/Colleague Friendly” and we do this by providing a voice (power), of creating a sense of belonging, offering choice based on responsibility and linking achievement with fun. PBCF, easy to remember but maybe not that easy to put into action.
Hi Kevin, yes, it’s an excerpt from my new book Just Great Teaching with a few new bits added. My conclusion is the government won’t solve any of the issues, only those in the profession itself.
Just had an Amazon delivery of a book with the very same title – how strange! Looking forward to reading it, looks as though it may just get mentioned in my book 🙂