Category: Assessment

You can also read this post on the No More Marking blog. In the previous few posts, I’ve looked at the workload generated by traditional English mock marking, and at the low reliability, and I’ve suggested that comparative judgement can produce more reliable results and take less time. However, one question I frequently get about… Read more »

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… Read more »

The primary interim frameworks are now in their second year, and their inconsistencies have been well-documented. Education Datalab have shown that last year there were inconsistencies between local authorities, while more recently the TES published an article revealing that many writing moderators were unable to correctly assess specimen portfolios. Here are five ways to help… Read more »

Last week I had a dream that I was explaining the new GCSE number grades to a class of year 11s. No matter how many times I explained it, they kept saying ‘so 1 is the top grade, right miss? And 3 is a good pass? And if I get 25 marks I am guaranteed… Read more »

This is part 5 of a series of blogs on my new book, Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning. Click here to read the introduction to the series. In the last two blog posts – here and here –  I’ve spoken about the importance of breaking down complex skills into smaller pieces. This has… Read more »

This is part 2 of a series of blogs on my new book, Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning. Click here to read the introduction to the series. For many people, teaching knowledge, teaching to the test and direct, teacher-led instruction are one and the same thing. Here is Fran Abrams from BBC… Read more »

This is part 1 of a series of blogs on my new book, Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning. Click here to read the introduction to the series. Giving feedback works. There is an enormous amount of evidence that shows this, much of it summarised in Black and Wiliam’s Inside the Black… Read more »

In February, my second book is going to be published by Oxford University Press. It’s called Making Good Progress?: The future of Assessment for Learning.  It is the assessment follow-up to my first book, Seven Myths about Education, which was about education more generally. In Seven Myths about Education, I argued that a set of… Read more »