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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…

…onto character assessments – for example, giving assessments of character weight in university admissions – then there would be an incentive to game such assessments and again, it is no…

…assessment and replaced it with a test. The flaws with teacher assessment are inherent in its very nature. Doing teacher assessment better basically means making it more test-like. The whole…

…example, I would argue, of the serious consequences of the lack of high quality training in assessment. So whilst on the surface teacher assessment seems a more human and fairer…

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; Ton…

…both the capacity of schools and ITT providers in the theoretical and technical aspects of assessment. This is a great concern – particularly as reforms to assessment in schools mean…

On Thursday evening I had the privilege of hearing ED Hirsch give the Policy Exchange education lecture.  Hirsch in person was much like Hirsch the author: self-effacing, erudite, quietly compelling a…

…that human judgment is relative, not absolute. This is the theory which underpins comparative judgment, a really interesting new way of assessing the quality of complex tasks like essays. The…

…Joe Kirby asked a question about what the government could do to encourage the approaches to assessment I was advocating, and I said, (more or less) very little. Broadly speaking, I…