The secondary curriculum review
Teachers are continually making their own assessments of what learners know and can do as an implicit part of routine classroom activity. These assessments will inevitably be in relation to specific aspects of a subject and dependent upon the current teaching focus.
From time to time it is important to step back and review the learning that has taken place to date across the whole subject, drawing on the full range of evidence available. This periodic assessment will help identify strengths and weaknesses for individuals and groups and prioritise the next steps in teaching and learning. Unlike an end-of-year or end-of-term test, this type of assessment gives insight into learning needs at a point where action can be taken to address those needs.
Periodic assessment offers an opportunity to look at the development of skills and understanding across the whole curriculum for a subject, not just to assess learning of the most recently taught topic.
Effective periodic assessment:
Periodic assessment has several benefits. It:
Decide, in consultation with departmental colleagues, on suitable timing for periodic assessment. Frequency and timing must fit with other work to avoid clashes. Take into account when the school requires teacher assessment judgements to be reported to parents. Consider when the assessment outcomes could be used to amend or update a scheme of work if particular needs are identified. Generally, periodic assessment is likely to be appropriate at two or three points in the year.
Schemes of work will be constructed around teaching and learning objectives; they should not only be led by assessment needs but should also take account of the need to assess learners' progress at specific points. In planning schemes of work it is important to identify where the opportunities are to gather evidence of learners' attainment in a wide range of contexts. These assessment-rich opportunities could be pieces of written work done in class, homework, individual or group presentations, oral responses, research findings and so on. Make simple notes when learners demonstrate significant knowledge, understanding or skills. These can be retrieved when the time comes to make a periodic assessment. There is no need to accumulate a portfolio of evidence for teacher assessment.
Assessment-rich opportunities must allow learners to demonstrate more than simple recall of recent teaching objectives. They will need to allow learners to show their knowledge, understanding and skills in circumstances where they carry out work independently and have a degree of choice in the methods they use or the way in which they present ideas. It may be that learners are applying what they know in new or unfamiliar situations, perhaps some time after a technique or topic has been taught.
Teachers might decide that periodic assessment should include all learners in a teaching group. However, it will often be sufficient to assess the work of just a small group of learners at any one time. If this group is selected as being indicative of the range of achievement within a larger teaching group, detailed review of their progress can give an insight into learning within the whole group. Alternatively, a different group of learners could be assessed in detail at each time point so that the progress of the whole group is assessed through a rolling programme of periodic assessment over a complete year. It is important to select the group in advance to make sure that sufficient evidence of the work of the group will be available when the assessments are made. Occasionally, it may be appropriate to assess individual learners using periodic assessment where there are concerns about progress.
A periodic assessment is a systematic, structured review of evidence of achievement carried out against specific criteria. The evidence reviewed should be from as wide a range of contexts as possible. It is likely that most will be drawn from everyday classroom activities but outcomes from assessment tasks or tests may also contribute to the review. Criteria used should be grounded in the national curriculum programmes of study and level descriptions. The outcomes of the periodic assessment should make links to specific teaching objectives so that next steps can easily be identified. Learners should be aware of the criteria that are used to assess their attainments.
To be useful for both teachers and learners, the assessment judgements must be consistent. All teachers in a department should have a shared understanding of the assessment criteria and how they should be applied so that their judgements about learners' achievements will be valid and reliable. Consistency in assessment can be developed through collaborative work among groups of teachers, for example by joint moderation of the work of small numbers of learners or by developing exemplar collections of work that illustrate attainment at particular levels and that can be referred to by all departmental staff.
The final stage in periodic assessment is to record the outcomes in a helpful and manageable way. Keep recording to a minimum - only record what will be used. Where possible, clerical aspects of recording assessment outcomes should be carried out by administrative staff.
Learners can be given high-quality feedback to help them understand what they have learnt across the curriculum for a subject; this is an opportunity to improve motivation by reflecting on their achievements. They will also be able to see what they need to do to improve and make further progress.
Sharing the overview of what has been achieved and what the next steps in learning are with parents and carers promotes their role as partners in their child's learning. It is much more informative for parents and carers to know that improving a particular skill or having a better understanding of a specific concept will help to move a learner to a higher level than just to be told a test score.
As well as using outcomes to provide feedback to learners and parents, teachers will be able to use the outcomes for setting curricular targets for individuals, groups of learners and the whole teaching group. Periodic assessment can be used to check what learners have learnt rather than the teaching objectives that have been covered and will enable teachers to identify areas where understanding might need to be strengthened. After periodic assessment teachers may wish to update and amend teaching plans to make sure that these areas can be revisited.
At departmental level, periodic assessment can help identify individuals or groups where progress is unsatisfactory so that plans for teaching and learning can be strengthened to address their needs. Since periodic review is about progression and learning across the whole curriculum, it is also possible that the outcomes may show that some aspects of the curriculum are not covered in enough depth to support satisfactory progress. Analysing the outcomes of assessment can be an important tool in reviewing existing schemes of work, helping to identify where modification could lead to improvements both in coverage and in the richness of the curriculum taught.
