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Assessing Without Levels
David Thomas & Alan Gothard
Why assess?
To answer three questions:
1. Where am I?2. Where am I going?3. How do I get there?
(Dylan Wiliam)
Ever feel like this?
Today’s Secret Teacher
• “We’re confused by complicated grading.Have pity on us and our silly muddling of levels and key stages etc. We know we should grasp that a 3c is just below the expected attainment level in year 4, but some of us did O-levels and still have to count secretly on our fingers to match ages and year groups.”
What advice would you give these students?
How can you assess without levels?
1. Write your perfect curriculum2. Check if students understand it
A better system
Three principles
• Break the curriculum down• Define it with questions• Use analogue data
Break the curriculum down...
• …into clearly defined chunks that students need to understand and remember, eg:– Adding and subtracting decimals– Solving linear equations– Index laws (1)
• About 15-20 per year• Each one of these will be assessed separately
• Everything will be built around these, so make sure you’ve got the split right. There’s a balance between giving lots of detail and being too complicated
Define it with questions
• Objectives in a curriculum mean nothing in isolation– Assessment defines the curriculum
• What does “find percentages of amounts” mean?• You need to develop your curriculum and assessment
together
Assessment defines curriculum
Use analogue assessment
Model 1• Give students assessments• Use a combination of these and teacher judgment to record
“Yes” or “No” for whether a student understands
Model 2• Give students assessments• Record their scores. Share these with staff, students and
parents
Use analogue assessment
• Understanding is not binary, and should not be reduced to a binary measure. This oversimplifies learning and discourages growth mindsets
• Binary assessment creates one high-stakes threshold around which all effort centres
• Giving out actual scores, with benchmarks (e.g. median, on-track for C/A), is more meaningful and less distortionary
The WA System
• The KS3 curriculum is broken down into discrete topics, with 15-20 per year
• Each topic is assessed with an in-class quiz, an end-of-term test and homeworks
• A weighted average of these three give an overall percentage for each topic
• Percentage scores are reported home on a termly basis, with a recommendation of what independent study to do next
• Teachers have termly data review meetings to look at actions from data
The WA System
What Went Well• Laser-like accuracy in
assessment• All interventions tailored by
topic with ease• Reports lead to action –
parents love them• No hiding from poor
performance
Even Better If• Intelligent spacing of
assessments• Storage and retrieval
quizzes• VLE
• Our software was ready!
Planning Exercise
• Collectively we’re going to write a Year 7 curriculum• This will be shared with everyone by email next week, for use
in your schools
Data Meeting
• You’re going to meet the class teacher to discuss their data• What will you ask/say to improve the progress of this class?
