This review deals with Key Stage 2 assessment and it’s become clear in recent years that
there's a great deal of unhappiness among our teachers and amongst our teaching profession
about the way in which that assessment has been carried out. So we’ve been looking
at ways to see if we can improve the system and, at the same time, improve standards.
Our whole approach is to recommend actually the providing more data in order to give a more
rounded picture of a school’s performance and therefore to provide more detail on progression,
to provide rolling averages – all these thinks I think provide a fairer, more balanced
picture of a school’s place.
There is a major change proposed in our report and that is that while the panel accepts that
vocabulary, spelling, grammar, these sort of things can be tested externally. Nonetheless,
as for writing composition, we do believe that is right that it be teacher assessed
and that this be the lion’s share of the assessment in the writing element for Key
Stage 2 tests. This involves a major renewal of trust, or commitment of trust, to our primary
school teachers, but it is a very substantial change in the way that the exams are currently
organised.
The panel, and indeed those that we talked to, all believe in school accountability.
But there are ways of doing this which are more, or less, fair. In our view, by introducing
rolling averages over a three-year period, we reduce some of the arbitrary elements that
can sometimes unfairly affect a school’s performance, and provide a more rounded picture
of what’s going on in a school. And one of the key problems that teachers have is
sudden absences of pupils at the time of the test, and we want to extend – to a week
– the time available for that absence, to allow for students to take that test.
One of the features of our report is to lay a much stronger emphasis on progression. We’ve
made a number of suggestions of ways in which progress can be measured and we’re hoping
that the consequence of doing that will again lay an emphasis on how much value-added there
is in the school for individual pupils as well as the broader issue of attainment.
We’ve paid a lot of attention to the whole issue – and it’s a very vexed issue – of
transition between Primary and Secondary schools. We’ve argued that teacher assessment should
be carried out earlier, we think for example that in the writing tests it might well be
a good thing if teachers at the secondary level are involved in the moderation of that
process and there is an approach in the report which is designed to bring together these
two worlds; connect them in a more fruitful way for the benefit of the individual child.
Well our approach essentially involves a combination of elements. We do believe that external testing,
in the way that it operates, does provide a measure of protection for the most disadvantaged
children. We do believe it imposes a pressure on the system which actually, potentially
protects the poorest child. However, we also believe that a concern with standards need not
lead to the stifling of creativity and in particular in the area of the writing test, where there
is probably more criticism than there is in other areas of the testing process, if we
make the change that we’re proposing towards more teacher assessment, we allow for a more
creative development of the relationship between the teacher and the child in a way in which
teachers themselves are asking for and which we think we ought to respond.