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Assessing Testing

4 Jan

Confession time for me.  It is easy to pontificate if one is a consultant as I am.  When in charge of an organisation or institution and constantly under the public microscope, it is a different matter.   So, what follows may well be in a sermonising vein.  But don’t pass judgement until you have read what follows.

Competition does not have the kind of benefits the UK government’s claims it does.  This is not to say that it is unnecessary.  However, much credence has been given to its seeming advantages.

We need tests and examinations to determine how well our children are doing and ensure that the young people who qualify to become the future movers and shakers of our society succeed in life.   I wouldn’t like to be operated on (for the removal of a cancerous tumour) by an unqualified surgeon who hasn’t passed a raft of medical examinations.

However, the value we put on tests, examinations and league tables has a detrimental effect on those schools/academies who are struggling to improve the quality of education.   To start with, tests and examinations tell us only so much about what is happening in an institution, which has responsibility for imparting to future generations the knowledge and wisdom of the current and previous generations together with helping them develop skills to navigate the chopping waters of the future.

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Teach children to fail well and fast

17 Aug

Summer is a time of tests and examinations and autumn of league tables.  Throughout the year we have inspections.  All three have one thing in common.   Achievement.   God help children if they fail and thus threaten their schools/academies with a lower rank on the national league table.  God help schools/academies if they fail their Ofsted inspections.   The education culture in our country appears to be obsessed with success and terrified of failure.   I question whether this is the culture we should be promoting.

Education is sometimes compared to a three-legged stool.  The first leg constitutes the disciplines/subjects that are taught, often, discretely, subjects such as mathematics, history, geography and music.  The second leg is each of the cross-curricular themes that help develop children in a rounded manner – such as expression/language and the ability to think.   The third leg is the way education is promoted, e.g. how teachers teach (e.g. telling and teamwork) and enabling children to learn (e.g. discovery, imitation and observation).  The late Professor Ted Wragg of Exeter University ascribed a different metaphor to this calling it the cuboid curriculum.

But there is a fourth leg (going by my analogy) or dimension (going by Professor Wragg’s one) – i.e. the qualities that we wish to promote within our children, a key one being resilience.   Intrinsic within resilience is managing and coping with failure.   Because every school/academy wishes to be at the top of its league table, governors, headteachers and staff do everything it takes to succeed.  This desire is both, intrinsically and extrinsically, passed on to the pupils.   And when they fail, their skies come tumbling down on them – as it did with chicken-licken in the toddler’s story.

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How do 15-year-old pupils in England compare to other top performers across the world?

31 Dec

I        Overview

In mid-November 2017, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released data on its “three yearly Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)”. PISA consists of standardised tests in reading, writing and mathematics taken by students from different countries at the age of 15. The data is then used to compare the young people. Data is matched with how young people fared in examinations taken in their home countries.

John Jerrim and Nikki Shure of University College London Institute of Education produced an excellent analysis of how our English pupils performed, some of the key points of which are summarised below.

Altogether, 75 countries participated in PISA 2015, including all members of the OECD and the four countries within the United Kingdom. For the first time, China (previously limited to Shanghai) included four provinces – Beijing, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shanghai. In England, PISA 2015 was conducted in November and December 2015, with a sample of 5,194 pupils in England from across 206 schools. The majority of England’s participating pupils were born between September 1999 and August 2000, meaning they came to the end of primary school during 2010, and were the last cohort to take the GCSE examinations before they were reformed.

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Keeping a check on pupil progress and achievements

31 Dec

A key responsibility of governors is to oversee the strides pupils make in their learning.  However, this is not possible without their knowing precisely what the assessment system is being used and understanding how pupils’ progress and achievement are measured.   This is much more easily done at the end of the key stages but daunting, in the in-between years.

In the halcyon day, the key data source for governing boards was the infamous (or famous) RAISEonline – issued by the Office for Standard in Education (Ofsted). The Department for Education (DfE) launched a new replacement service called Analyse School Performance (ASP) from 1 September 2017, used mainly at Key Stages 1 and 2.   So how are pupils assessed at the different Key Stages?

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Assessing Assessments

18 Apr

Assessments in English schools are in a state of flux. There appears to be little likelihood that the government will be bring about a measure of clarity any time soon.   What exactly is happening?

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Data from international tests rain down in Autumn 2016 like confetti

1 Jan

In the last week of November 2016, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) published its report on the Trends in Maths and Science Study (TIMMS).  A week later, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – an arm of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – published its findings.   Both are based on a battery of tests which samples of pupils/students took in 2015.

I        TIMMS

TIMMS is a survey of the educational achievements of pupils in years 5 (aged nine-to-ten year olds) and 9 (aged 13-to-14 year olds) in 57 participating countries, as well as comparisons of the curriculum and the teaching of Mathematics and Science.

The national report for England found that while the country’s maths results are now at the highest point for 20 years in both age groups, overall improvement is still lagging behind other countries. Since the first assessment in 1995, England’s score in Maths increased by 12.8% for year 5 and by 4% for year 9. Despite this, the score is behind top-achieving countries who have seen more rapid improvement. The East Asian group of countries continued to perform extremely well across the assessments.

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Changes to Key Stage 2 Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) from 2016

9 Apr

I        The arrangements

From 2016, pupils at the end of Key Stage (KS) 2 will continue to sit externally-set and marked tests in mathematics, reading, and grammar, punctuation and spelling. These will be used for school performance measures from 2016 onwards. A sample of pupils will sit tests in science as well, to give a picture of national performance in this subject.

Teacher assessment in maths, reading, writing and science will continue. Tests and assessments will reflect the 2014 National Curriculum and will be reported as scaled scores.

The 2016 assessment and reporting arrangements (ARA), published by the Standards and Testing Agency (STA), explains that the new KS2 National Curriculum tests (SATs) will consist of

  1. English reading: with associated resources of reading and answer booklets;
  2. English grammar, punctuation and spelling paper 1: short-answer questions;
  3. English grammar, punctuation and spelling paper 2: spelling;
  4. Maths paper 1: arithmetic;
  5. Maths paper 2: reasoning; and
  6. Maths paper 3: reasoning.

The ARA document states that the KS2 tests will be administered in the week beginning 9 May 2016. Table 3.3 on page 8 of the ARA document shows the scheduled days when tests must be taken. It explains that these dates may change.

The STA’s guidance about KS1 and KS2 test dates in 2016 explains that the KS2 science sampling tests will take place in the weeks commencing 6 and 17 June 2016.

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