RETHINKING ASSESSMENT – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0081)

Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry

This document is an edited version of an internal summary document initially provided to the Advisory Group of the Rethinking Assessment organisation. It outlines our key principles, developments to date and priorities for the coming years. It is best read as a working document, and is extensively supplemented by materials on our website, www.rethinkingassessment.com. We trust it gives a flavour of our arguments for change, and our thinking about how to bring it about. There are real alternatives to the status quo, and it is our view that a new approach is necessary to equip young people for fair access to fulfilling employment.

The Context

Exams have a stranglehold on our entire education system. They dominate what is taught, how it is taught, and lived experience of every child, parent and teacher in the country.

Many young people find the way our exam system works increasingly stressful and not a true reflection of what they can do or are good at. The arms race for grades is brutal, and the notion of ‘raising standards’ redundant; the GCSE system necessitates that the bottom third fail.

Headteachers feel that high stakes exams distort priorities and stops them from providing a well rounded education for their pupils. Our assessment is not giving universities, colleges or employers the kind of information they want, or evidencing the kinds of dispositions and capabilities which help young people to succeed at school and in life.

About Us

Rethinking Assessment is a broad coalition of school leaders from the state and independent sectors, researchers, policy-makers and employers working with a sense of urgency to find the best ways of evidencing the full range of young peoples’ strengths.

You can see the members of our Advisory Group here.

Mission: To create a rigorous and equitable assessment system that recognises the strengths of every child by building compelling arguments, powerful coalitions, and practical solutions

Our aims:

1. To make the case for change through case studies, analysis, evidence, and thoughtful blogs
2. To provide workable solutions, practical ideas and approaches (from classroom level to system level) that we can pilot and offer as real alternatives
3. To build a coalition for change that mobilises and harnesses teachers, parents, employers, pupils and other stakeholders
    

Our work to date has focussed on five main strategic objectives:

1. Scanning the world for promising practices

2. Coordinating working groups to
+ explore ways of better recognising academic strengths
+ recognise broader skills & dispositions
+ consider the role of technology
+ develop a holistic learner profile and understand system change

3. Identifying a portfolio of action research pilots for 2021-2023, each with a research partner, to test out our thinking

4. Building the coalition and making the case for change

5. Forging strategic partnerships and raising resources
 

Our end goal is to reform what is measured, evidenced and valued in education, in pursuit of a more expansive and holistic education for all young people. We are working towards the creation of a new flexible learner profile that can be used across the world, which recognises the full breadth of a young person's strengths, and provides a richer set of information (beyond just numbers and letters) for further and higher education providers and employers.

Our theory of change is that assessment reform leads to curriculum reform - broaden assessment and the curriculum becomes broader and more flexible. We envisage the learner profile being a catalyst for wider impact, in providing an incentive for schools and colleges to focus on a broader and more balanced offer. Over time, the profile may form the basis of a new qualification that has the potential to bridge the long-standing divide between academic and vocational learning, bringing different forms of learning together under one unified qualification.

Why does assessment need to change?

This is a critical area where change is needed because the current assessment system:

• provides no evidence of the strengths of every child (particular harm to those with specific learning needs or who are neurodiverse) 

• relegates and undervalues vocational education, and does not value essential skills or work-related learning 

• does not provide employers with information about wider employability skills or dispositions

• narrows the curriculum, making exams the key driver 

• creates huge pressure and stress on teenagers reducing motivation, and at a critical time for brain development

• labels a third of young people a failure because exam results are comparable

In making the case for change, we have produced:

1. Over 40 blogs from a range of people and organisations, interrogating a range of perspectives asking the big questions. These are best viewed here