In this series of posts I record my notes from Daisy Christodolou’s book “Making good progress? The future of Assessment for Learning” It is quite excellent. You can buy a copy here.

An integrated assessment system

An accurate and useful progression model is the foundation of any assessment system because it explains how pupils make progress. SoWs and lesson plans and the curriculum can all be based on this progression model. Textbooks would be the most efficient way to bring all of these items together.

The first item in a progression model is a collection of formative questions which match up to the curriculum. The bank should be online so that pupils can access it at home or at school. Pupils should have formatives at the end of lessons or chapters and these would contain questions on new material and also on material previously taught. It could be linked up to question level analysis and if it was automated could point pupils straight back to a relevant video or worksheet on what the students had just got wrong.

Next we should have summative item banks. For difficulty model assessments this could be whole past papers or if online a computer adaptive system that makes testing shorter and more accurate. For quality based model we could use a comparative judgement system.

Finally a standardised test bank would contain be non-curriculum linked questions like the CEM tests. These are useful for setting targets.

Such a system would be beneficial because it would be coherent: a clear structure of progressing to novice to expert. It has the ability to give pupils ownership of the curriculum. It could also be self improving.