Assessment in schools
Lots of news around today about assessment in schools and some discussion about the need to get rid of "Value Added" assessment.
I am certainly all for getting rid of some testing. I would scrap AS levels and SATs at Key Stages 1 and 3. The SATs were a useful tool a few years ago because, at that time, self-assessment was fairly crude. But schools are now far more sophisticated in the way they monitor performance, so you could justifiably get rid of these without any loss of knowledge. However, I would not get rid of KS2 testing because it is absolutely correct that students are assessed at the point when they transfer to the secondary sector.
I hate AS Levels. They have destroyed one of the most fun periods in the education system. The first year of 6th form used to be fairly relaxed, students were given space to grow and develop, as well as learn. It has now become just another year of pressure and actually means that we are formally assessing our children every year from the age of 13 (KS3) through to 18 (A Level). It is just too much.
Value Added assessment is extremely important. Because it is the true measure of how good a school is (in terms of academic achievement - schools are about more than that). In blunt terms value added shows how much a school adds to a child's education over and above normal levels of progression.
Schools in some of the less affluent areas often lose the most academically gifted to selective schools and are left with middle to low achievers - I have no problem with that, it is part of having choice within the system. However, where schools are achieving above average results with average children, the "value added" score is able to demonstrate it, league tables on their own are too crude a measure to enable this.
Losing "Value Added" will do a disservice to the system. Personally I would rather see the end of run-of-the-mill league tables.
I am certainly all for getting rid of some testing. I would scrap AS levels and SATs at Key Stages 1 and 3. The SATs were a useful tool a few years ago because, at that time, self-assessment was fairly crude. But schools are now far more sophisticated in the way they monitor performance, so you could justifiably get rid of these without any loss of knowledge. However, I would not get rid of KS2 testing because it is absolutely correct that students are assessed at the point when they transfer to the secondary sector.
I hate AS Levels. They have destroyed one of the most fun periods in the education system. The first year of 6th form used to be fairly relaxed, students were given space to grow and develop, as well as learn. It has now become just another year of pressure and actually means that we are formally assessing our children every year from the age of 13 (KS3) through to 18 (A Level). It is just too much.
Value Added assessment is extremely important. Because it is the true measure of how good a school is (in terms of academic achievement - schools are about more than that). In blunt terms value added shows how much a school adds to a child's education over and above normal levels of progression.
Schools in some of the less affluent areas often lose the most academically gifted to selective schools and are left with middle to low achievers - I have no problem with that, it is part of having choice within the system. However, where schools are achieving above average results with average children, the "value added" score is able to demonstrate it, league tables on their own are too crude a measure to enable this.
Losing "Value Added" will do a disservice to the system. Personally I would rather see the end of run-of-the-mill league tables.
posted by Martin Curtis at 12:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home