Nuffield Curriculum Centre

General issues

Teacher assessment - not coursework

www.assessment-reform-group.org

Ruth Kelly seems set on cutting down on Coursework, so it is timely to have a new pamphlet about the role of teachers in the assessment of learning.

Assessment Reform Group booklet coverThe new pamphlet from the Assessment Reform Group is a further outcome of its Assessment Sytems for the Future project.

You can download a copy of the 15-page, A5 pamphlet from the web site. Also on the web site you will find working papers from the ASF project.

The report weighs up, in a measured way, the pros and cons of teachers contributing to summative assessment. It describes the key features of schemes that enable teacher assessment to be reliable. It highlights the potential benefits of a successful approach which can greatly alleviate the more pernicious effects of schemes of assessment that rely solely on external tests.

Coursework has got a bad press. But coursework and teacher assessment are not the same thing. So I hope that Ruth Kelly's advisers will read this pamphlet.

If the government is serious about flexibility and personalisation (and it says it is) then it has to take the findings of this pamphlet (which are informed by research) seriously.

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