Life after Levels: Five years on

Exactly five years ago, the government announced that national curriculum levels would be removed – and not replaced.

Here’s a quick guide to some of my life after levels blog posts from the last five years.

It was definitely a good thing to abolish levels. As I argued here, here and here, they didn’t give us a shared language. Instead, they provided us with the illusion of a common language, which is actually very misleading. This is because they were based on prose performance descriptors, which can be interpreted in many different ways. Unfortunately, many replacements for NC levels were based around the same flawed prose descriptor model.

If prose descriptors don’t work, what does? One good idea is to define your standards really clearly as questions. EG, instead of saying ‘Pupils can compare fractions to see which is larger’, actually ask them ‘what’s bigger: 4/7 or 6/7? 2/3 or 3/4? 5/7 or 5/9?’ And don’t expect that if they get one of those questions right that they will get them all right!

This works well for maths, but what about things like essays? How do you mark those without a descriptor or a rubric? Another great idea is to use comparative judgement. I first wrote about this back in November 2015. It is basically the most exciting thing to happen to assessment ever. I am so excited about it that I am going to work for No More Marking who provide an online comparative judgement engine. If you haven’t read about it already, do! You can also watch this video of me talking about one of our pilot projects at Research Ed in 2016.

The two books I’ve found most helpful in thinking about assessment are Measuring Up by Daniel Koretz, and Principled Assessment Design by Dylan Wiliam. My review of William’s book is here. My review of Koretz’s book is in three parts: Part one is How useful are tests?, part two is Validity and reliability, and part three is Why teaching to the test is so bad.

In February 2017, Oxford University Press published my own book on assessment, Making Good Progress?: The Future of Assessment for Learning. You can read more about it here. At the Wellington Festival of Education in 2016, I gave a talk which summarised the book’s thesis – you can see the video of this here.

I think the abolition of levels has given teachers the chance to take control of assessment, and has sparked debate, discussion and innovation around assessment which has been hugely valuable. Of course, things still aren’t perfect. National primary assessment has had a number of setbacks, and there are still lots of examples of ‘new’ assessment systems which are essentially rehashed levels. But overall I am really excited, both about the work that has happened in the last five years, and the potential for even further improvements in the next few years.