Teach-Primary-Issue-19.4

Old-fashioned methods of evaluation are still surprisingly prevalent, and dragging our pupils down; it’s time to move on, says Richard Selfridge B y the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study .” This statement, which appears in the current national curriculum Key Stage 1 and 2 framework document, might seem a bit odd to many of you, particularly if you have at any point been encouraged to see learning as a series of small steps in which children learn a little bit more of the national curriculum each term. Learning’s not linear For a long period between the introduction of the national curriculum in England in 1999, and the point when a revised, new national curriculum was introduced in 2013, there seemed to be a general assumption that all children could regularly be placed onto different rungs of a ladder, which led inevitably upwards. What’s more, there was an assumption that teachers and their schools could have a high degree of certainty about which step on the ladder children were on at any given point in time. Until 2014, pupils’ development through primary school was split into a series of linear ‘levels’ of attainment, through which the children were expected to progress. This requirement, ultimately, is the root of what might be called a ‘progress mindset’, the legacy of which pervades the primary landscape. The levels system had the best of intentions. It was designed so that all children – and their parents – could see that they were becoming more proficient during their time in school. Unfortunately, this soon transformed into an expectation that children should progress uniformly through a series of regular smaller ‘steps of progress’ across school years. These expectations then became measures of ‘expected progress’, and the system of levels began to collapse under the pressure placed on it. An official School Inspection Update in March 2017 informed schools that, “‘ Expected progress ’ was a DfE accountability measure until 2015 ”. The update made it clear that Ofsted inspectors were advised not to use this term when referring to ‘progress’ from 2016. And yet the mindset lingers on. What is a progress mindset? Assessment systems based on a progress mindset require learners to move through a series of steps of some kind. The steps lead inevitably upwards from a lower point to a higher point and pupils tend to move regularly from one step to another, usually a term at a time. Autumn is often, for example, ‘emerging’; spring is when students are ‘developing’; and summer is when they “A progress mindset can distort assumptions about how children develop academically” What’s your ASSESSMENT STYLE? “ 44 | www.teachwire.net