Why, how and when should we assess children’s learning? - Part II.

Recently, I have been asked for my views of an initiative being put together by a group of international schools called the ‘Coalition to Honour All Learning’ designed to encourage universities to take into account a much wider portfolio of achievement when offering  places on university courses [1]. Their target in particular is the many universities that offer places solely on the basis of examination grades. I have wished it well, as recording these experiences and competences at school level can lead them to be encouraged and regarded highly – and they are very important aspects of education -  and can discourage schools from falling into the trap of giving priority over everything else to  examination results. I also feel that it may be good for the student himself or herself to have thought about and recorded all that they have achieved while at school and to have this verified. I cannot be optimistic, however, that busy university admissions officers will pay it a huge amount of attention. 

Value-added assessment 

The most important way in which data from summative assessment can be used for diagnostic and evaluative purposes is when it is linked to a prior assessment that, when compared with the summative assessment, is able to show how much value had been added by the school during the intervening period.  When I was  chief executive of England’s School Curriculum and Assessment Authority  we commissioned the first major national survey – the Value Added National Project - into the potential use of value-added measures. This was partly in reaction to the hostility of head teachers to the publication of school league tables, based on the raw data from England’s new national tests, which failed to recognise that schools at the bottom of the table, with a cognitively weak pupil intake, might well be doing a better job with their pupils  than a school at the top of the table, with a very strong one, i.e. might be adding more value.  

The project’s report raised the profile of the concept of value-added measurement, which was widely welcomed by head teachers as an addition  (or, as many would have preferred, alternative) to league tables based on raw examination results. It led to more and more schools using assessments such as the three I mentioned earlier for value-added purposes. Although England never introduced the full system of value–added across all phases that had been recommended it does currently require schools to calculate value-added measures for each individual pupil and the school as a whole based on a comparison of test results at age 11 – the baseline assessment – with performance in the public examinations at 16.  

My own direct experience with these measures in the two schools in England and Switzerland where I was head and a third school in which I was a Governor has been with the A-level Information Service (ALIS) scheme which uses a computer-based adaptive test of developed abilities taken at 16 comparing it with the A-level or International Baccalaureate examination results at 18. The comparison of the two shows the extent to which value has been added, or not, at the levels of the individual,  examination subject and year group.  Where the baseline-predicted outcome across all students in a subject is significantly  higher than the actual one this is a signal that there are issues with the teaching of that subject that need to be addressed. 

In one of the three schools where I poured annually over these data a significant discrepancy kept on recurring in a particular subject. Students in that subject were doing considerably worse than in other related subjects for reasons that could not be explained by anything other than how they had been prepared for the examination. The problem repeated itself in successive years. Senior staff kept the matter under close review, the subject department concerned was required to change its teaching methods, a new head of department was appointed and results eventually began to improve. In some schools the use of value-added measures in ways like this has been a significant factor in raising overall standards of attainment right across the curriculum.

Assessment is a means to an end, not an end in itself 

I have always supported the continued use of timed written examinations, as providing a stimulus to individual pupils to work hard at their studies. I have also, as head and governor of schools, seen how important it is never to give the impression that doing well in examinations is the main end of schooling. 

Having had two grandchildren take their A-level examinations at age 18  this summer and another one take her GCSE examinations at age 16  I have been aware of how all-absorbing the experience can be not just for the student but for the surrounding family. The best schools manage to keep this in perspective, ensuring that students are both helped in managing the work involved in preparing for examinations and encouraged to maintain a rich programme of extra-curricular educational activities alongside it. At one school where I was a governor students who, throughout their final year, had continued to throw themselves into meeting targets in other activities were also – reassuringly, but perhaps not surprisingly -  those with the highest academic results. The challenge presented by examinations in this case strengthened this determination, not the reverse.  

I have also in recent years been impressed by how the growing use of value-added has strengthened the determination of  head teachers whose examination results may look far from outstanding but which show outstanding progress in relation to the low levels of attainment of their pupils at entry. Far from encouraging complacency this can inspire to ever higher levels of achievement. Similarly it has been good to see previously complacent schools – those in nice middle-class areas – suddenly realise that, though their examination results may be in the top quartile, they are in the bottom quartile in terms of the value they have added.

I remain confident therefore of the power of the kinds of summative and value-added assessments I have discussed to contribute to the fundamental aims of education, and above all to support the knowledge-rich curriculum on which an education should be based. Even more important than all these, however, I would continue to prioritise the daily informal diagnostic and formative assessment of individual pupils. This should be at the centre of a school’s work. Nothing can beat the feeling that there is someone who cares about one’s progress, who knows one’s strengths and weaknesses and is there to help one overcome any difficulties one might have in one’s learning. Without this something significant would be missing from the very considerable benefits of all the other kinds of assessment I have been discussing.