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I'm Tim Oates. I am Group Director of Assessment, Research and
Development to Cambridge Assessment.
I was also chair of the expert panel which informed the review of the national
curriculum from 2010 to 2013.
When we revised the national curriculum we drove many aspects of the
review through the study of high-performing jurisdictions around
the world.
In primary, in particular, we discovered that
in the nation's that had improved fast and from a high base,
those curricular shared something in common.
Children in primary studied fewer things in greater depth.
They really mastered fundamental concepts in subjects and
their understanding was really secure.
What we wanted to do was to ensure that our national curriculum allowed children
to study at the right pace so that they secured deeper learning in the
central concepts and ideas in the subjects in the national curriculum.
This has transformed assessment too.
Assessment should be focused on whether children have understood these key
concepts, these key areas of knowledge and skill,
rather than whether they've achieved a particular level or are
moving at a fast pace up through the levels.
The expert panel recommend that the levels should be dropped in
the revised assessment arrangements for the national curriculum and
I think there were really compelling reasons for doing that.
The first was that the original model of levels, in the TGAT report
which some teachers may remember, was that levels should be used because
this would enable kids to progress through education and
not being labelled as grade D, grade D, grade D.
They could show progress through the levels, from level 1 through to 4, 5 and 6.
That was laudable and the original author Paul Black now
agrees with us and the expert panel that the
level system has become over influenced by other factors.
What that means is that kids themselves are labelling themselves as
being a particular level.
"Well I'm level 3 and all my friends are level 4"
That's very dysfunctional in terms of learning and that is the first compelling
reason, this idea of kids labelling themselves and that being
inappropriate in learning.
It can actually hold back their learning rather than encourage it.
The second was undue pace.
The whole of the system has become focused on getting kids to move quickly
through the levels, maximum progress.
What we know from study of high-performing jurisdictions around
the world is that none really use a model of levels as we do.
Those other jurisdictions, many of whom achieve very
high standards and have improved fast, really focus on whether a child has
understood the concepts, ideas, key knowledge and skills that
are required in a particular phase of their learning and
ensuring that they have achieved deep, secure understanding of those things.
That is not levels, that is reassuring that assessment is focused on the
key content. That is the second reason.
The third reason is that it is a very odd idea, this idea that somebody is
level 3 and we had three different models of this in the system.
The first was that they are level 3 because they got a particular score on a national
curriculum test.
On that test you could have picked up a large number of marks on some quite
low level items and then a few high-level items but you average out at level 3.
You are not really a level 3, it is because your performance
is a bit all over the place. The level is rather odd, its validity is low.
That is the first meaning. That you are level 3 because you got a
particular score even though those marks could have been derived in very
different ways.
The second meaning of level 3 is that in assessing pupil
performance, APP, where children and teachers were looking at examples of
work, you were level 3 because your work best matched a
particular level descriptor, even though perhaps you had not
grasped some key ideas. You were moved on
inappropriately because you didn't have secure understanding in
all the key ideas.
It is a different model of level and it has its own educational problems.
Then the third meaning of being a particular level was
'just in', a kind of threshold.
"Thank goodness this child is level 4 at the end of primary."
But they are 'just in' level 4. Those are three different models of
levels all coexisting; teachers meaning different things,
the school meaning a different thing to the state and that's
not healthy. It is incoherent.
We did feel that there were a whole series of compelling reasons
why levels should be moved away from, in respect to assessment around
the national curriculum.
The final reason and it is a compelling reason in its own right,
is that those other nations that have improved fast and achieved very high
standards, high equity and high enjoyment of their kids,
in respective of learning, don't use levels.
There are schools like the Wroxham School in Hertfordshire and
Dame Alison Peacock's Outstanding School, those schools
have never used levels.
They have not used levels because they feel it conveys the wrong
idea of ability.
That was something which shone out of the national curriculum review when
we looked at the international evidence.
In some other nations, high-performing nations,
if a teacher is asked, "Why hasn't this child understood something?",
the teacher will respond, "Because I haven't presented it to them in the
right way yet."
In England the tendency is to say,
"Well, they have not understood it because they are level 3"
It is a totally different model of ability and Paul Black and I have
discussed this and we feel that we need to switch
to a different conception of children's ability.
Every child, during primary, being capable of anything, depending on
the effort they put in and how it's presented to them.
Levels have really been getting in the way of this.
What we want is a model of ability based on each child being capable of
anything and us looking progressively, through assessment,
at what ideas a child has understood.
A focus on the concepts, the knowledge and the skills and
not on a particular levels label.
The new national curriculum really does focus on fewer things in greater depth.
If teachers look through the content they will see that it really emphasises
key concepts, key ideas, key bodies of knowledge, key skills and
it is chocked-full of skills.
Experimental work in sciences is in there and applying mathematics
is in there. These are areas of skill as well as knowledge.
The changes in assessment really should encourage teachers to
focus on assessing whether a child has understood a particular thing,
a particular idea and a particular body of knowledge.
The arrangement of the primary national curriculum in to
age-related statements and broken in to years,
I believe is very helpful.
The law remains that a child has to achieve certain things by the
end of the key stage.
It is not that the year sequence needs to be followed slavishly.
Breaking it down into a year by year framework does
enable the conceptual progression through a particular subject
to be made extremely clear.
The assessment should therefore focus on: has a child understood the key ideas which
we are trying to get them to understand and grasp at this particular age?
The revised structure of the national curriculum, I think, encourages that.
Assessment in the classroom and ongoing assessment in the school
should really be focused on enabling teachers
to select questions that they put to children,
to select assessment items or questions which they can put to children to see
whether they've really understood the particular ideal or grasped
a particular body of knowledge.
I believe that, in our system, we claim frequently that there's
too much assessment.
I think that there is too little assessment.
The reason for that is we haven't got enough assessment of the right kind.
We need rich Q&A in the classroom that probes
the understanding of children, that probes whether they have grasped an idea like
conservation of mass or grasped the idea of condensation.
It's this rich probing of their ideas, through study of what they
say and study of what they do, which should really be behind assessment
in the revised national curriculum.
We need more assessment of a different kind, much more probing and
much more supportive of learning.
In going around schools and talking to teachers,
I've noticed a tendency of teachers to dive down straight into the content of
the revised national curriculum, to look at what content changes there have
been in a particular year in mathematics.
That is important. The content changes are important but
if you simply approach the changes as a change in the content in particular
subjects, you will miss some of the key ideas that drove the revision of
the national curriculum.
This idea of fewer things in greater depth, where children have really deep
learning and secure understanding of the key ideas, concepts and bodies of
knowledge, there is a danger of missing that.
When we looked at the evidence on high-performing
jurisdictions around the world we really spotted this
fewer things in great depth idea.
We wanted children not to move with undue pace through the content
of the national curriculum.
Assessment should be focused on establishing whether a child has
secure and deep understanding of the particular idea, as appropriate to
them at that stage of their learning.
If they have unsecure understanding and they move on, then their overall
progression through education will be prejudiced.
What we need is clear, progressive statements in the national curriculum.
Those statements focusing on key ideas, key concepts and
the assessment being focused on those. Has a child grasped these
in sufficient depth and with security so that they're ready to move on to the next
phase of their learning?
That's a fundamental change. Not just a change in content.
What I'd like to emphasise is a rather odd idea,
but the idea of production. In really good schools,
outstanding schools where children are progressing well and
attaining high standards and where equity is high,
children produce a lot. That sounds terribly reductivist but it is not.
Children are producing statements, they are making
claims about things, they are asserting their hypotheses about things,
they are producing more things on pieces of paper; writing, diagrams and pictures.
If they produce stuff, that stuff can be looked at by teachers and
teachers get an insight through the things that the children are producing,
an insight into the mental life of the children and that's
fundamental to assessment in schools.
It enables teachers better to support the child, better to understand
whether they are ready to progress, better to understand whether they have
actually secured deep learning,
whether they can apply their knowledge and skills in a broad range of settings and
that they have really solid and secure knowledge and understanding.
That's what assessment should be about. This idea of production is quite important.
When I go into the schools, these high performing schools, children are
producing a lot.
They're talking, their writing a lot and that's really good
for high-quality, formative assessment. Teachers are approaching
the changes in the national curriculum as a change of content and they do have to
understand that it's a change of approach, a change in underlying
ideas about children and about ability.
One of the consequences of these changes is that they're going to have to become
experts in assessment in a way in which they have not had to be before.
This means they have to think hard but the questions they are going to put to
children, about the questions they are going to put to children by speaking
to them and probing their understanding, questions they are going to put
them on paper for them to respond to, which really probe their
understanding in relationship to key ideas and in many cases these
questions are available.
We have GCSE questions floating around the internet from exam boards,
hundreds of them; they can be used with kids of all ages.
I've used questions from public examinations with very young children,
as long as they are aimed at the concept or idea that
the child is struggling to acquire.
They can be used to probe understanding and stimulate really
interesting discussion about the ideas.
Teachers can pick up questions about ideas like
the reflectivity of surfaces.
Items that are typically used in examinations with quite old
children could be used with very young children to probe
their understanding and stimulate discussion.
In many ways teachers need to become assessment kleptomaniacs,
they need to look very broadly on the internet for questions which
are focused and valid in relationship to the idea which is
the object of study in a particular week or particular month in the school.
These can be used to support learning and to assess whether
the child has understood the idea.
This is a really important new approach I think.