“So, are you going to write another book?” Matt asked me as we looked through a close-to-final draft of The Next Big Thing in School Improvement. It was summer 2021, the first time we’d seen each other in person since deciding to write a book together (with Ben White) at researchED Birmingham in March 2020. …
If we were to design an assessment system focused on maximising learning, we wouldn’t create a Key Stage 3 "No Man’s Land" followed by the high-stakes pressure of GCSE jeopardy. Yet, this is precisely the experience many students face in today’s education system — a period of inconsistent focus in the early years of secondary …
Continue reading GCSE Jeopardy and the Difficulty with Second Chances
Fifteen school data leads convene, bringing together their Heads of Science, English, History, and Maths to create shared end-of-year assessments in these four subjects. What's the impetus behind this collaborative effort? The performance of a subject department is often inferred by comparing the knowledge and skills of their students against a benchmark—usually other students. However, …
Continue reading The quest for standardisation in shared assessments
Do you write your class assessments to suit your subject’s curriculum and its knowledge architecture? Or do you shape your visions of knowledge architecture to reflect your subject’s assessment tradition? Classroom practice is often described by educationalists as a three-legged stool comprising curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Three-legged stools are exceptionally stable, provided each of the …
Continue reading Which came first: The knowledge architecture beliefs or the assessment?
In my last post, I explained how KS2 maths SATs can encourage students who struggle with maths to chase marks in periphery topics, rather than improve arithmetic understanding and fluency which is necessary for the study of secondary mathematics. In this post, I’m going to reflect on how we might manipulate accountability to do the …
Eddie (aged 7) and I have been chatting about assessment theory. Eddie: Some children in my class know all the grades you get at secondary school. But I only know one grade and that’s grade B. ME: Well, let me introduce you to the grades A, C, D, E and F [Doesn’t seem fair to …
Continue reading The goal of the curriculum and the shape of the attainment curve
Yesterday, Adam Robbins posted on Twitter an excellent thread about assessment that included this comment on Question Level Analysis (QLA). It's easy to say that QLA generally isn't a good idea (and I used to say this), but I keep encountering teachers who insist that they find analysing individual questions on a test helpful! My …
Continue reading The limited uses of question level analysis
These three blogs (part I, part II, part III here) are based on a talk I gave at Headteachers' Roundtable Summit in March 2019. My thoughts on this topic have been extensively shaped by conversations with Ben White, a psychology teacher in Kent. Neither of us yet know what we think! Our beliefs about our …
These three blogs (part I, part II here, part III) are based on a talk I gave at Headteachers' Roundtable Summit in March 2019. My thoughts on this topic have been extensively shaped by conversations with Ben White, a psychology teacher in Kent. Neither of us yet know what we think! The two fundamental jobs …
Continue reading Writing the rules of the grading game (part II): The games children play
These three blogs (part I here, part II, part III) are based on a talk I gave at Headteachers' Roundtable Summit in March 2019. My thoughts on this topic have been extensively shaped by conversations with Ben White, a psychology teacher in Kent. Neither of us yet know what we think! Teachers are rarely trained …
Continue reading Writing the rules of the grading game (part I): The grade changes the child
Becky Allen 