Teach Secondary - Issue 14.6

Driving improvement If you want to see just how misplaced our approach to ongoing assessment can be, compare what we ask of students to what’s expected in a standard driving lesson, observes Matt Hallam ... I t’s an easy start to the year, and good for getting to know the kids. Give them a GCSE paper and see what they can do.” That’s how one senior leader responded when I asked how best to start the year. I was an ECT (or NQT, as we were called in 2010) at a new school, preparing to teach new students, and I needed to know how ready my Y8 class were going to be for their GCSE in four years’ time. So what better way of finding out…? Aweek later, I sat down to reflect. Had it been an ‘Easy start to the year’? Absolutely not. Deliver a fresh-faced teacher to a lively bunch of Y8s, and trust that they’ll sit in silence to complete a test… they must have smelt the naivety as soon as I walked through the door. Had I at least ‘got to know the kids’?Well, I did now know they couldn’t sit in silence, and (un)surprisingly, couldn’t complete a GCSE exam paper at the grand old age of 12. Of course, I would be reassured in time that this was due to some of them being ‘ kinaesthetic learners ’ – perhaps they were going to somehow communicate written language features throughmimetic dance when the time came…? Showing progress So, what had they learnt from the experience? That English was boring? Probably. That they were a failure? Likely. That I was moody? Definitely! Naturally, the torture wasn’t yet over for me, or them, as for the next six weeks, they’d spend hours ‘developing’ the skills for this exam, while I’d spend evenmore hours keeping stationery manufacturers in business by covering the students’ books in red pen. This whole ordeal would then repeat every six weeks to ‘show progress’. The formative had shown they couldn’t do it – so any progress they made at all, I could be proud of...right? At the time, it hadn’t been that long since I’d passed my driving test, and I couldn’t help but compare my experiences of that with what my Y8s were going through. What would we say if driving instructors got their learners to take a full driving test in lesson one, simply in order to ‘ see what they can do ’? School assessment may have come a long way in the 15 years since then, but the question remains – is our ongoing assessment practice getting full marks? Are we actually ‘ready for the road’? What follows below are a few missed opportunities that I still encounter regularly, along with some potential quick wins. Getting the ‘formative’ right In 2010, I was an ill- informed educator. Not just when it came to the process of assessment, but also with respect to the considerable wealth of data and expertise that could have prevented such a highly inappropriate ‘formative’ fromhappening in the first place. Today, before meeting a new class, I’ll aim to have acquired as much formative information about them as possible. This starts with speaking to their previous teachers and TAs, but also involves gathering other academic information beyond just that related to my subject of English. It’s common practice for schools to complete Reading Age (RA) or Standard Age Score (SAS) tests, typically as a whole-school progress measure and to identify any intervention needs. They can also be effective tools for ongoing assessment, yet will tend to see little use in the classroom. This is unfortunate, since all good RA/SAS tests will provide not just students’ reading age, but crucially, their reading needs and strengths. Once identified, this important information should be reflected in seating plans, to allow for ongoing cross-curricular assessment. Ensuring that strong comprehenders and decoders are seated alongside one peer of similar strength and another requiring support will help students develop their own subject skill, while also providing a living, breathing scaffold of support for those who need it. This can also empower educators to target their questioning in a way that develops and constantly assesses the vocabulary, fluency and comprehension of select students – something that research has shown is a crucial factor in securing cross-curricular knowledge. After all, there’s a reason as to why learner drivers aren’t allowed on roads with passengers who are also learning to drive themselves... “Ongoing feedback is about preventing errors from becoming embedded” 28 teachwire.net/secondary