The Secondary Assessment Working Party followed the report of the Independent Assessment Commission – New ERA – along with a number of other reports advocating reform of 14-19 assessment and qualifications.
These showed a building consensus around the need for change and outlined recommendations on what that change could look like.
The Working Party remit was to build on the recommendations of the report of the Independent Assessment Commission – New ERA – and to research and promote equitable and reliable alternative approaches to assessment in secondary education.
What can we take from this work?
On the current assessment system:
- The current assessment system is outdated and places limits on everyone.
- Change is possible. Alternatives exist. Change happened during the pandemic, and is currently taking place both within the UK and beyond.
- Working class children are being constrained by a neoliberal education model with the pernicious influences of league tables and Ofsted. Added to this is political influence on our education system with a focus on a narrow knowledge based ‘cultural capital’. The current assessment system is designed to fit these rather than the authentic and future needs of our young people.
On principles to inform change:
- Learning is the simple, enjoyable act of someone improving in some shape or form.
- Everyone should have an opportunity to feel successful at school and have their progress in learning suitably accredited.
- One size does not fit all. There needs to be a smorgasbord of assessment, which is criterion based.
- Students and employers need support in understanding the learning and assessment taking place in schools.
- Assessment should take place at a time suitable to the learner.
- Assessment needs to align with the desired outcomes of the course being assessed.
- Learning technologies need to be beneficially exploited for assessment.
- The unproductive links between accountability and choice of assessment models needs to be broken.
The main purpose of this report is to highlight the fact that alternative ways of assessing students are perfectly possible. They have existed in the past, they exist currently and there are approaches which are already in development for the future.
While the cancellation of exams during the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the problems with a current assessment system which devalues the skills of teachers and relies far too heavily on end of course exams, it did not present clear, sustainable solutions. It is hoped this report can provide a useful and active contribution to the process of planning an alternative system which will be to the benefit of students, educators, universities, employers and society as a whole.