Chronicle January 2021

28 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Bringing a Fresh Perspective to Assessment By Matthew Albrighton, Deputy Head Academic

Lord Baker, at a conference held in November at the Chartered College of Teaching, conveyed his view that, though he was responsible for their introduction in 1988, GCSEs are now ripe for abolition. At the same event, respected speakers from a range of educational contexts highlighted the need for a serious review of the nature and purpose of assessment during, and at the end of, Years 10 and 11. The so-called Rethinking Assessment group, the organisers behind the conference, contains within its membership leading thinkers from politics, psychology, universities, academies and independent schools. The group, which points toward a more holistic vision for education and assessment, has not as yet laid out an alternative plan.

knowledge. The resulting chasm between what is needed at 16 and the demands on students in the Sixth Form (and then university) is, for many, too difficult to bridge. The negative stranglehold that GCSEs have on curriculum and teaching design is further tightened because of the weight these one-time assessments potentially have on the future of a young person and, for what it’s worth, the school – particularly in the maintained and academy sectors. Individual teaching plans and whole school schedules are distorted out of place to ensure that performance against this very singular criterion (that of recall) is maximised. The Pathways and Perspectives courses reject the premise that recall is the only important learning skill and place at their centre a wider range of skill sets that incorporate spoken communication, research, thinking, creativity, collaboration and self-management. There is still room for a test or two but continuous assessment

Indeed, the challenge of finding an alternative framework for learning and assessment at 16 is not insignificant in scale and complexity. It is therefore no surprise that leading educators are looking to St Edward’s with great interest as a beacon of excellence in curriculum and teaching design. For St Edward’s finds itself at the forefront of this national discussion in offering a coherent and intelligent alternative to a standard GCSE programme of study. Our Pathways and Perspectives are part of an integrated programme that respects the direct relationships between the way young people are taught, what they learn and how they learn. Terminal tests, such as GCSE, do provide a useful way of ranking pupils by performance. Tests in themselves are not to be frowned upon – A Level and IB remain, largely, terminal summative assessments. The problem is that what is tested influences the methodology of teaching and the nature of learning skills developed. GCSEs test merely the ability to recall a tightly prescribed, often arbitrary, body of knowledge in a very specific format. Skilled teachers do more with the GCSE format than this, but with the best will, if success is measured in such a narrow way, why explore the limits of knowledge

and skills when there is potentially a risk of affecting the grade by straying away from the prescribed content? So without good leadership, and when there is an emphasis on results at all costs, a teacher will teach to the test and desist from nurturing fully the rich process of understanding how to build

Sadie Newman in a Drama Pathway lesson