Leadership and Governance: Primary Assessment and Accountability
Raising the Bar: Primary Assessment and Accountability
The DfE consultation about primary assessment and accountability took place over
the summer ending mid-October 2013. This article explores the proposals put
forward for consultation and warns of the potential far reaching consequences for
primary education.
No more ‘levels’
Following recommendations from the National Curriculum Expert Panel chaired by
Tim Oates in 2011; the decision was taken by the Secretary of State for Education,
Michael Gove, to remove national curriculum levels. The Expert Panel were
concerned that levels had become an end in themselves:
‘We are concerned by the ways in which England’s current assessment
system encourages a process of differentiating learners through the award of
‘levels’, to the extent that pupils come to label themselves in these terms.
Although this system is predicated on a commitment to evaluating individual
pupil performance, we believe it actually has a significant effect of
exacerbating social differentiation, rather than promoting a more inclusive
approach that strives for secure learning of key curricular elements by all. It
also distorts pupil learning, for instance creating the tragedy that some pupils
become more concerned for ‘what level they are’ than for the substance of
what they know, can do and understand’ (Expert Panel, 2011:44)
This quote from the Expert Panel final report emphasises the negative effects of
labelling, ranking and micro measuring that became prevalent in many schools due
to a culture of high-stakes testing. Their argument was that levels had become part
of a culture that was limiting and that the discourse of primary education could
become more ambitious if the notion of ‘levels’ were removed. However, the
proposals within the primary assessment and accountability consultation remove
levels whilst increasing ranking; thereby completely missing the point.
From September 2014 there will be no national curriculum levels and no prescribed
replacement system for ongoing assessment and reporting to families. This provides
schools with a demanding set of challenges:
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How should day to day learning be assessed in order that teachers can tailor
their teaching to the needs of each child?
How can schools evidence children’s achievements and attainment as they
move through the school or between schools?
How can individual schools demonstrate to parents and external bodies such
as Ofsted that the organisation has enabled every child to succeed?
Schools working collaboratively with LAs, teaching schools, unions and others, will
need to create and share innovative assessment and reporting practices in order to
address these priorities.
What is primary education for?
The Primary assessment & accountability consultation states:
‘We believe that the single most important outcome that any primary school
should strive to achieve is making sure as many of its pupils as possible are
‘secondary ready’ by the time they leave’.
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Alison Peacock
Leadership and Governance: Primary Assessment and Accountability
The consultation goes on to state that secondary readiness means a high standard of
English and mathematics attainment that exceeds the current expectation of Level 4.
The notion that the most important part of primary education is preparation for the
next phase and test performance in maths and English, offers a very narrow view of
childhood and early learning. There is an insistence that children who achieve 4c in
maths or reading are unlikely to attain highly enough at GCSE. No evidence is
presented to show that this is a consequence of ineffective primary schooling; no
mention is made of KS3 teaching. The conclusion is drawn that primary schools
need to ‘raise the bar’ and should demand a minimum of 4b equivalent from all
children unless they have significant special educational needs. All schools will be
expected to aim for 85% of children to reach the new ‘secondary ready’ standard.
There is no mention of the 15% of children who will be informed that they are not
ready for secondary school.
A new baseline test in Reception?
The new assessment and accountability proposals focus sharply on school
effectiveness. As a consequence, there is a need to ensure that progress measures
from Reception to the end of Year 6 are clearly quantifiable (and presumably more
trustworthy than teacher assessment). The consultation seeks to gain responses
about a range of possibilities for rigorous baseline assessment of four & five year
olds described as a ‘baseline check’. No detail is given about what such a ‘check’
may look like but if it is to be considered more reliable than months of close
observation and record keeping by early years professionals one assumes that faith
is being placed in some kind of cognitive profile / IQ test. If agreed, the new baseline
check will be carried out from September 2015.
There is a flawed assumption that any base level assessment of young children can
reliably capture future attainment. There is no mention of the vexed issue of summer
born Reception children. Neither is there any suggestion that advice would be given
to teachers and families to show them how to help those children who achieve a low
score at baseline. This could lead to a deterministic view that children are preprogrammed to succeed or fail at birth.
Replacement KS1 tests?
Questions are asked in the consultation about whether the KS1 test marks should be
published and used as a baseline for progress measures. Alternatively, there is a
suggestion that KS1 tests could become non-statutory if a new baseline were to be
used in Reception. If a Reception baseline check is implemented from September
2015 it will provide measures for Y6 in May 2022. It seems likely that schools would
be tempted to start drawing progress comparisons year on year before then as that
would provide a long term slow burn option for school accountability. Would this lead
to a demand from schools for commercially produced IQ style checks as updates
throughout the primary years? None of this, in my view, would be in the interest of
the child but would support the accountability needs of the institution.
More stringent KS2 tests with ranked outcomes
New KS2 tests of English and mathematics will be introduced in the summer of 2016
that will be ‘more demanding’ ‘higher and more ambitious standard’. Pupils who
‘clear the bar’ we are told, will be ‘genuinely ready to succeed in secondary
education’. The proposals moot the idea that children’s performance in the tests
should be ranked across all English schools in deciles thereby enabling children and
families to know how they have attained in comparison with thousands of other
eleven year olds. The language of ‘clearing the bar’ is reminiscent of athletics and the
high jump. We need children and young people who believe in working hard
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Alison Peacock
Leadership and Governance: Primary Assessment and Accountability
individually and as part of a team, to achieve personal goals for lifelong learning.
Meaningless ranking is not helpful and may well be damaging.
Primary colleagues will need to hold firm to principles of inclusion, empowerment and
ambition for every child if these proposals are to achieve their aim of improving
schools. If testing takes precedence, we are putting our energies in the wrong place.
The highest standards will be achieved when we have an unshakeable belief in the
importance of excellent teaching across a broad balanced curriculum. Assessment is
a vital part of informing this process, but should never be allowed to drive it.
References:
DfE 2011 ‘Independent Review of Key Stage 2 testing, assessment and
accountability. Final report’. Lord Bew
DfE, 2013, ‘Assessing without levels’ 14 June 2013.
DfE 2013 ‘The national curriculum in England. Framework document’ July 2013
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/new-national-curriculum-primaryassessment-and-accountability
DfE 2013‘Primary assessment and accountability under the new national curriculum’
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Alison Peacock