Taking Ownership of Assessment

As another season of SATs draws to a close and the yearly cycle of moderation begins, we thought this an apt time to reflect upon assessment. Never has school assessment been so controversial, drawn so many headlines or created such an emotional response from teachers and parents alike. So: what has really changed; what has remained the same and how can we make assessment work for us? 

National assessment, whether we like it or loathe it, is used to measure, compare and evaluate the effectiveness of schools and more so than in any previous system, the tests and interim assessment frameworks feel like they are there to assess schools, rather than pupils, upon their ability and effectiveness of delivering the precise content of the curriculum – and actually this should be held on to as a positive when considering some of the headlines that have appeared in this year’s press. Fortunately, these assessments at KS1 and 2 are not going to hang like a millstone around children’s necks for the rest of their educational careers: but are rather being used as a way of measuring how much of the curriculum has been attained at particular stages. When the tabloids paint images of six and seven-year-olds taking ‘tests’, the image is of children sitting in rows, in a cold examination halls with invigilators marching up and down the aisles. Of course this has never been advocated, so to allude to these sorts of images is not particularly helpful. It is up to schools as to how much pressure is put upon individuals and how tests are administered. Many schools we work with deliver the key stage one SATs in such a way that children are unaware that they have even been taken. We must also remember that these assessments, particularly as far as our year two children are concerned, are just one aspect of the collection of evidence that builds towards the bigger picture of our own teacher assessment. We should acknowledge that, in a profession subject to so much scrutiny, we are still being trusted to give a teacher assessed standard to the children we teach; rightfully being identified as the professional who knows our children’s educational standards better than anyone else.

But why do we need to assess at all – and what skills should the assessment focus upon? I was reminded (thanks to the power of twitter) this week of an Albert Einstein quotation; ‘Anyone can know, the point is to understand’. For me, as blunt as that may sound, it actually helps to underpin the purpose of these assessments, which may have become slightly blurred along the way, and it is particularly necessary to remind ourselves of this when using the interim frameworks (and those ‘tick’ sheets), or to make sense of the tests, as they seem to advocate and indeed prioritise knowledge over understanding. So too, could the national curriculum, which has become known informally across the land as the ‘pub quiz’ curriculum for its seeming focus on general knowledge rather than the teaching of skills. We have to return to the concept of the grammar, spelling and handwriting being set within the context of real, purposeful writing. Indeed, the exemplification materials are a good reminder of this. Whilst it may appear that standardising children’s writing is nothing more than scrutinising it for the use of the passive voice, exclamation sentences or use of parenthesis, and working our way down a ‘tickable’ set of criteria, we must take into account the overall effectiveness of that piece of writing first. We have been at pains to tell the moderation teams we train in London that we must read the entire piece of writing first, to gain a sense of the writer in the child, before looking for the grammatical features and spelling patterns that form the nuts and bolts of their writing. Whilst these nuts and bolts may be what builds the writing, it is the child who creates the composition, and, after all, it is the child we are assessing. It is vital, therefore, that we give them the best opportunities to use the right grammar at the right time. Whilst we may visibly flinch at the idea of teaching an infant to use an exclamation sentence beginning in what or how, let’s rather see it as an opportunity to teach them about the importance of addressing their audience. Exclamations are often that authorial nod to the reader giving an opinion or thought; they sit really well within stories and recounts: How loudly the lion roared! or What an awful day we had! In fact, although slightly ‘old fashioned’, significant authors have long used this grammatical tool to speak to their readers. The passive voice sits perfectly within reports and explanations, where the agent of the action (be it a criminal misdemeanour or a scientific experiment) is unknown: the window was smashed or the ice cube was placed in direct sunlight. The subjunctive mood (perhaps the most controversial of all the grammatical devices mentioned in this curriculum), allows us to teach a really formal tone (something I really struggled to teach under the old framework) and is perfectly placed within a formal letter to advice: If I were you, I would not close down the playground. Instead, I suggest it be refurbished so the children of Peckham have a safe place to play. Let’s perhaps see these somewhat highfalutin grammatical terms as an opportunity to give children more control over their written outcomes, especially during the editing process. To do this, we must match meaningful writing opportunities to these grammatical outcomes, or they will always seem like standalone pieces of learning that could actually conflict good composition, rather than complementing it. Furthermore, if we go in grammar first and teach it discretely, we are ignoring all the messages the curriculum gives us about the importance of composition, the need for cohesion and the sequence of planning, drafting, editing and publishing cycle. Hurray then for the clarification guidance, although coming somewhat at the eleventh hour, that encourages us to look at edited and published writing (so long as we could see the sequence that built towards that piece of work). Thank goodness that it outlined guidance around independence, and underlined the fact that spelling could be edited, and that we are not looking for children to use the know the spelling pattern by rote, but that they can use strategies such as word banks, dictionaries and spell-checkers.

So, why does it seem that the national assessments standards have been interpreted as seemingly advocating the exact opposite of this? Particularly when assessing writing, why does it seem that grammar, spelling (and to an extent handwriting) are where we make our judgements? When given some consideration, it is easy to see why the Department for Education and STA would prefer to create a set of standards that seem to imply that these are the most important aspects of writing, rather than to focus on the composition: they are fundamentally the most straightforward aspects of children’s writing to measure without introducing any degree of subjectivity. In the past, where composition and effect was not only assessed, but held the most weight, it was very difficult to evaluate, standardise and measure its overall effectiveness. Arguably, it was always tricky to assess the overall composition and effect of a child’s non-chronological report about the night time or a description of the narrative of a boy waiting in a queue, without bringing in preconceptions about what the content of good fiction, non-fiction, narrative and non-narrative writing should look like. Not only that, this writing was done in isolation and without context. Moreover, when assessing this grammar-and-spelling-heavy curriculum, it introduces a pertinent sense of accountability around the expectations within: never before have curriculum and assessment mirrored one another so precisely. So, let’s refer back to that exemplification, that demonstrates real writing, set in an engaging context and with a real purpose for the grammar it uses, because that’s where the composition is. Let’s remember that for all the bullet-points telling us to look for semi-colons and subordinates, that the first sentence of each of the writing standards is about the need to set writing within the context of a range of writing opportunities for varied audiences and purposes.

As far as the assessment of Reading is concerned, the changes to this curriculum have meant a greater focus on the teaching of language. Synonyms, antonyms, inferring meaning in context and the grammatical function of words have all been assessed through the tests. Assessing language is always tricky, especially where children’s contextual backgrounds may mean that English isn’t their first or only language, or where children have a range of experiences and are exposed to different words, phrases and idioms by adults who speak to them: how do we know that the words we expose them to will be the ones that are assessed? Of course we will never be able to predict what will be tested, but perhaps we should be grateful that this curriculum promotes language and literature and that the more writing we expose our children to, the greater the breadth of quality authors they read, the more vocabulary they will carry forward with them, regardless of whether they know specific terms, such as ancestor or not. Heartening too, perhaps, that the reading exemplification we have been given this year shows children engaged in reading real texts and responding thoughtfully to them, and most of all enjoying the process of reading – something a set of standards on a page could never depict.

So, we may have entered a brave new world of assessment, and a lot has changed, but let’s use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate our provision and make sure that we give children creative, engaging, exciting contexts to apply, and that language and grammatical devices become powerful tools for children to self-express and be creative, rather than simply something against which to be ‘measured’. Let’s hold on to teacher assessment as the most important feedback we can give to parents, governors, senior leadership teams and indeed departments for education and look at the bigger picture of assessment, not just the tests which can form part of it. Let’s make this curriculum and the assessment of it work for us, rather than seeing it as merely the ticking-off of criteria on a checklist or perfecting terminology for a test. Tests and assessments are there (like them or not) to assess understanding, not as a stick with which to be beaten. If we take ownership of the curriculum and its content, we can give children rich and varied experiences that lend themselves to effective coverage and (dare I say it) enjoyment of key criteria, and the assessment can be what it should always have been: a by-product, a tool to identify gaps in understanding and part of our everyday, on-going understanding of how well our children are doing.