An outsider’s view on assessment-related policymaking

Or: “five years of crying out in disbelief…”

Warwick MansellTalk to AAIA conference, 10/10/15

• “I do have a view about things like the curriculum…and I see it as my role to initiate a debate.”

Nick Gibb, schools minister, quoted in Schools Week, 2/10/15

“England needs a more mature, less party-political, curriculum

debate”

(NAHT blog, January 2011)

“The utterly corrupting effects of school league tables”

(NAHT blog, September 2011)

“What is happening with the national curriculum review?”

(NAHT blog, November 2011)

“National curriculum review: what is going on?”

(NAHT blog, April 2012)

“National curriculum review: we all deserve better from politicians”

(NAHT blog, June 2012).

“Sitting in the audience, I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing”

(NAHT blog, July 2012)

“Can policy-making really be this bad?”

(NAHT blog, December 2012)

“No detail yet on primary accountability”

(NAHT blog, February 2013)

“A system which serves politicians, not schools”

(NAHT blog, June 2013)

“The ‘too abstract’ levels system and its more abstract proposed

replacement”

(NAHT blog, July 2013)

“DfE primary assessment plans: some reactions”

(NAHT blog, October 2013)

“David Cameron: let’s make war on schools”

(NAHT blog, February 2015)

“Assessment commission report: more questions than answers”

(NAHT blog, August 2015)

National curriculum+assessment reviews: a timeline

• Nov 2010: Tim Oates “Could do better…” article on national curricula published.

• Jan 2011: M Gove launches curriculum review• Summer 2011: First delays in review process• Dec 2011: Curriculum put back a year for core

subjects• Dec 2011: Expert panel report published. But

¾ members of expert panel rebel vs DfE.

Timeline continued

• June 2012: draft programmes of study published. Levels confirmed as going.

• Feb 2013: Still no signs of how new curriculum to be assessed.

• July 2013: Consultation paper on assessment finally arrives. Scaled scores, deciles, baseline assessment.

• March 2014. Assessment plans firmed up. No deciles, but scaled scores. Much of it unpopular.

Timeline continued

• Oct 2014: Consultation on new “performance descriptors” announced. Also prove unpopular.

• Feb 2015. Commission on assessment without levels announced, to report by July.

• July 2015: Report still not published.• Sept 2015: Report published.• Sept 2015: Guidance on teacher assessment

published. But for “one year only”.

• “It turns out that designing a replacement assessment system for the new curriculum has been a lot more difficult than we in the department realised. I appreciate that many of you have raised concerns about this over the recent years, and in particular over the timescales given over to implementing it….”

• (“The education secretary”, as quoted on Michael Tidd’s website)

“I can only apologise here: we got it wrong. Despite the many experts available to the department, we have been unable to construct a purposeful and manageable assessment system for the new curriculum in good time.”

(“The education secretary”, as quoted on Michael Tidd’s website)

Current features on the landscape

• Scaled scores• Ofsted inspections• Testing, testing, testing• Teacher assessment

• “We do not intend the baseline assessment to be used to monitor the progress of individual children. You rightly point out that any assessment that was designed to be reliable at individual child level would need to take into account the different ages at which children start reception and be sufficiently detailed to account for the variation in performance one expects from children day-to-day.

• (David Laws, letter to Frances Watson)

“….Rather the baseline assessment is about capturing the starting point for the cohort which can then be used to assess the progress of that cohort at the end of primary school.”

(David Laws, letter to Frances Watson)

“[The end of levels] shouldn’t be leaving parents floundering. Schools have a duty to share useful information with parents, and I’d argue that removing levels gives us a lot more scope – and encouragement – to do that.”

(Michael Tidd)

Association for Achievement and

Improvement through Assessment

Annual Conference Peterborough Marriott Hotel

8th-10th October 2015