I can remember taking part in marking moderation sessions using the Assessing Pupil Progress grids. We marked using ‘best fit’ judgments. At their worst, such ‘best fit’ judgments were really flawed. A pupil might produce a very inaccurate piece of writing that everyone agreed was a level 2 on Assessment Focus 6 – write with… Read more »
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I’m a bit late to this, but I just wanted to write about how much I enjoyed Ouroboros by Greg Ashman. It’s a very elegantly and sparely written account of Greg’s experiences of teaching in England and Australia, and of the education research which is relevant to his experiences. The central organising metaphor is the… Read more »
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Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to Oxford University’s History Aptitude Tests (HAT). These tests are designed for 18 year olds applying for admission to Oxford. I really liked the look of them – the one I saw was interesting, challenging, covered a broad range of historical eras and I can imagine… Read more »
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Yesterday I went to a brilliant day of professional development at Ark Globe Academy called Teach Like a Top Athlete: Coaching and Mastery Methods. I went to a workshop run by the amazing Jo Facer on Mastery Planning, and one by the equally amazing Dan Lavipour and Michael Slavinsky called What Can Teachers Learn From… Read more »
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I spent yesterday at the Michaela Community School Debating Education event, which was absolutely brilliant. I spoke against the motion ‘Sir Ken is right: traditional education kills creativity’, and Guy Claxton spoke for it. Here are some of my notes from this debate, and the day. It’s about methods, not aims I agree with Sir… Read more »
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In my previous posts I have looked at some of the flaws in traditional teacher assessment and assessments of character. This post is much more positive: it’s about an assessment innovation that really works. One of the good things about multiple-choice and short answer questions is that they offer very high levels of reliability. They… Read more »
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My last two posts (here and here) have looked at how teacher assessments can be biased, and how tests can help to offset some of these biases. I’ve been quite sceptical of the possibility of improving teacher assessment so that it can become less biased: the more you try to reduce the bias in teacher assessment,… Read more »
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In my last post, I spoke about how disadvantaged pupils do better on tests than on teacher assessments – and also about how many people assume the opposite is the case. It’s interesting that today, we seem to think that teacher assessment will help the disadvantaged. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the… Read more »
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One of the frequent complaints about tests is that they are a bit dehumanising. Every pupil is herded into an exam hall, there to answer exactly the same questions. The questions they answer are often rather artificial ones, stripped from real-world contexts and on occasions placed in formats, such as multiple choice, that they will… Read more »
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On Thursday I spoke at an Intelligence Squared debate called ‘Let’s end the tyranny of the test: relentless school testing demeans education’. Together with Toby Young, I spoke against the motion; Tony Little and Tristram Hunt spoke for it. There were a number of important points of agreement between the two sides. Tony Little told… Read more »
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