This report provides advice for schools on how to design a new model for assessment for pupils following the removal of national curriculum levels. It may be of particular use to school and subject leaders.
Principled assessment design
Synopsis
This report is part of SSAT’s Redesigning Schooling series. Following the removal of national curriculum levels in September 2014 in England, Professor Dylan Wiliam suggests that schools must develop their own way of assessing pupils’ progress. He writes that this represents an ‘extraordinary opportunity’ to design an assessment system that is ‘the servant, not the master, of the learning’.
Wiliam outlines a nuanced way of thinking about assessment, one that should underpin the design of any model. He argues that it is important to know the limitations of different types of assessment and the impact these can have on inferences about teaching and learning.
He also suggests teachers need to define what they are assessing and how they will use assessment data: what data they will collect, share and record; and, critically, how assessment systems that actively support teaching and learning can be designed.