Exams tend to dominate what is taught, how it is taught, and the lived experience of every child, parent and teacher in the country. When thinking about appropriate systems and processes of assessment we must first begin by thinking about the purpose of education and then what we are seeking to assess.
This raises a set of key questions: What outcomes are we seeking to achieve through the process of education? How can we capture and assess those difficult to measure pupil outcomes that often evade more simplistic forms of measurement? What concerns emerge when we focus too heavily on easy to measure outcomes, to the detriment of other important outcomes?
The aim of this event is to explore new ideas and practices that seek to add to our knowledge and understanding of assessment and outcomes within schools. Rethinking Assessment, are a group of educational experts, including school leaders, teachers and academics, who have been working together to expand our knowledge and approaches to rethinking pupil assessment. For more on the case for change, see Bill Lucas’s blog.
The event will include presentations from key members of the Rethinking Assessment coalition. They will provide insights from their first three action research projects, looking at interdisciplinary learning and assessment, the assessment of creative thinking, and oracy. There will also be breakout discussions so that attendees can discuss the themes in more detail, and a forum to share perspectives, thoughts and ideas with the Rethinking Assessment team. These insights from the group will be fed back into Rethinking Assessment’s future project work.
Speakers will include:
- Professor Bill Lucas, Co-Founder of Rethinking Assessment
Bill is Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning and Professor of Learning at the University of Winchester, and co-chair of the new PISA 2022 Test of Creative Thinking. He will talk about the vision and mission of Rethinking Assessment, and the global landscape of assessment reform.
- Phil Avery, Director of Education at the Bohunt Education Trust, and lead for Rethinking Assessment's interdisciplinary learning work
Phil is the Director of Education at the Bohunt Education Trust, which runs seven schools across the South East and West of England, and oversees curriculum and assessment across the Trust with particular expertise in STEM and industry partnerships. He will talk about Rethinking Assessment’s interdisciplinary learning and assessment work on migration, and key learnings so far.
- Amanda Moorghen, Head of Impact at Voice 21, and lead for Comparing Talk
Amanda leads research and impact at Voice 21, the UK’s leading charity promoting speaking skills in schools. She will share learnings from the Comparing Talk pilot, which aims to test the use of comparative judgment in creating an oracy progression scale, as well as effective tools for assessing talk in the classroom.
- Emily Reid, Assistant Head Teacher and Creativity Collaborative Lead, St Bernards School (part of Holy Family Catholic MAT, and involved in the RA creative thinking pilot)
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