Statutory Teacher Assessments? Let’s Ditch Them
Far from being something to fear, doing away with statutory teacher assessments could help liberate the profession, argues Michael Tidd… I often wonder how much energy and effort – not to mention cost – went into producing the current interim assessment frameworks. Surely it’s rare to devote so much time to something that’s only temporary? […]
- by Michael Tidd
Far from being something to fear, doing away with statutory teacher assessments could help liberate the profession, argues Michael Tidd…
I often wonder how much energy and effort – not to mention cost – went into producing the current interim assessment frameworks. Surely it’s rare to devote so much time to something that’s only temporary?
It might be reasonable to surmise from this that the DfE is determined to get statutory teacher assessment right. And yet, it seems to have got it so wrong.
Arduous box-ticking
When teachers were consulted on the initial performance descriptors in autumn 2014, they were promptly rounded upon by the profession. When the second attempt arrived in September 2015, the government didn’t bother with consultation, but few of us were impressed.
The final straw came in February with the publication of the writing exemplifications for KS1 and KS2. Very quickly, teachers saw an enormous workload looming on the horizon; an arduous process of box-ticking, aligned to a framework that seemed to have ramped up expectations beyond anyone’s belief. Within days, Russell Hobby of the NAHT was calling for the department to think again, with his very clear statement that ‘enough is enough’ when it comes to the disorder around assessment. It seemed the profession’s breaking point may have been reached. In some ways, you can see the effort that has been made to improve teacher assessment. If the ‘best-fit’ approach of levels was part of the reason they were scrapped, then surely a system that requires pupils to master every statement improves that process?
Time to let go?
Unfortunately, this seems to have caused the department some problems. If the old lists of Level 4 criteria – in their entirety – had been made to represent the minimum standard at KS2, this would probably have driven expectations up to around the 4b level much touted by politicians. However, by raising the bar and moving from a best-fit model to one with copious tick-boxes, this appears to have brought the new ‘expected standard’ to something more akin to Level 5 at KS2 (mirrored by a statement that looks more like Level 3 for pupils in KS1). Rather than quibbling over the best way for statutory teacher assessment to be managed, maybe it’s time to let it go altogether? It seems to have been the source of so much consternation for so long, that perhaps now is the time to let go of the whole approach.
After all, it’s been a long time since the supposed equivalence of ‘teacher assessment’ and test results meant anything. At KS1, it seems almost inevitable that next year’s tests will become externally marked to meet the department’s demands for ‘robustness’. Only KS2 writing will then remain as a subject without external tests – and even there, the grammar, punctuation and spelling test exists.
What difference does it make?
Is a test the best method for assessment of pupils’ attainment? Perhaps not. But if nothing else comes from the whole ‘life without levels’ experience, it should be the knowledge that there is more to assessment than categorising children into groups. All over the country, schools are moving on from the old ways of lumping children into sets based on a mysterious system of codes, to instead focusing on knowing what pupils can and can’t do. The demise of teacher assessment needn’t mean the demise of teachers making assessments – far from it. Freed from the burden of the interim assessment frameworks, teachers in Y2 and Y6 would certainly have a good deal more time to focus on assessing the progress of their pupils. What harm would be done if the statutory teacher assessment processes were done away with? Surely no teacher would miss the additional workload. Parents needn’t worry about losing information; they could receive far more useful information by reading their child’s school report, or through talking to her class teacher. No school leader can honestly think that the largely ignored teacher assessment data will make any difference to a school’s standing.
Who’s it good for?
The only people who can possibly have any use for statutory teacher assessment would be central government – except the frameworks we’ve been given are so heavily weighted towards aspects of spelling, grammar and punctuation, that we might as well use the test results we already have for these aspects and reduce teachers’ workloads. For years, teachers – particularly in primary schools – have feared the loss of teacher assessment. It strikes me that now could be the opportunity to take back control of teacher assessment entirely by separating it from the government’s accountability structures. Let’s make assessment about teaching – not politics.
Michael Tidd is deputy headteacher at Edgewood Primary School in Hucknall, Nottingham; follow him at MichaelT1979
