Assessing Without Levels

Chris Olleychris.olley@kcl.ac.uk

Assessment reform• As part of our reforms to the national curriculum, the current

system of ‘levels’ used to report children’s attainment and progress will be removed from September 2014 and will not be replaced.

• By removing levels we will allow teachers greater flexibility in the way that they plan and assess pupils’ learning.

• The programmes of study within the new National Curriculum (NC) set out expectations at the end of each key stage, and all maintained schools will be free to develop a curriculum relevant to their pupils that teaches this content. The curriculum must include an assessment system which enables schools to check what pupils have learned and whether they are on track to meet expectations at the end of the key stage, and to report regularly to parents

National curriculum and assessment from September 2014: information for schools

Association for Achievement and Improvement through Assessment

• We have … opted to recommend an approach to pupil progression that emphasises ‘high expectations for all’ – a characteristic of many high-performing jurisdictions. This conveys necessary teacher commitment to both aspiration and inclusion, and implies the specific set of fundamental achievements that all pupils should attain.‘High expectations for all’Report by the Expert Panel for the National Curriculum ReviewDecember 2011 (Chapter 8.17)

• … all assessment and other processes should bring people back to the content of the curriculum (and the extent to which it has been taught and learned), instead of focusing on abstracted and arbitrary expressions of the curriculum such as ‘levels’.Curriculum focused assessmentReport by the Expert Panel for the National Curriculum ReviewDecember 2011 (Chapter 8.24)

• Tim Oates, Chair of the Expert Panel for the National Curriculum • Review http://www.aaia.org.uk/assessing-without-levels/

NAHT produces new framework on assessment to guide school leaders

• A set of model assessment criteria based on the new national curriculum has been produced by NAHT to help school leaders measure and record pupil progress without using attainment levels.

• The authors of the model are clear there is no single perfect model to assess pupils’ progress against any given curriculum. However, it is hoped the NAHT model will provide schools with a practical approach to assessment that is flexible and, if broadly adopted, provide a common approach to the assessment of pupils' progress.

• In respect of the national curriculum, we believe it is valuable – to aid communication, comparison and benchmarking – for schools to be using consistent criteria for assessment. To this end, we call on the NAHT to develop and promote a set of model assessment criteria based on the new national curriculum.

• Materials are available here: NAHT assessment framework materials.

NFER: Where have all the levels gone?

• The level based language of the National Curriculum was not perfect. But ‑it did offer a certain degree of shared vocabulary and conceptualisation to aid communication about pupil progress. At its best, it informed assessment discussion and resulted in high quality formative assessment ‑practice.

• Teachers used a common interpretation of the criteria and exemplification of standards to benchmark their pupils’ achievements, identify areas for development and plan the next steps. You could argue that good teachers don’t need the language of ‘levelness’ to do this, and maybe that’s so.

• But the principles of good practice assessment tell us that it’s important to ‑have some shared point of reference for assessment standards. The alternative would risk a return to assessment localism in its worst sense: assessment with no agreed external reference point, leading to uncertainty about standards in pupil achievement.

http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/99940/99940.pdf