Assessment in key stage 3 history had been a losing battle for head of department Samuel Atkinson-Sporle, offering up data that didn’t give a useful picture of where students were at with their learning.

So, he and his colleagues decided to get back to basics and break the learning down into “building blocks”. The results have revolutionised the subject for staff and students alike, he says, as he sits down with Tes to explain the approach.

You say key stage 3 assessment hasn’t been up to scratch for years. What are the issues?

The issues come from the central question of what we actually want students to do at this stage. For years, within history, KS3 assessment has taken one of two paths, which are often mirrored in other subjects, too: either a GCSE-style exam question or a “Write a newspaper article about …”-style question.

But both of these approaches are wholly inaccurate for assessment at this stage. We were either scaling back the mark scheme, awarding students depressingly low marks or we were trying to grade creative assessments. Both approaches were giving us ultimately meaningless data.

How did you decide to address this?

I read widely on the pedagogy of how students learn differently as beginners and experts, and linked this to cognitive load theory. This process reinforced the idea that students are not mini experts waiting to have their heads filled with the relevant information. They are beginners, and beginners learn differently from experts. Therefore, they should be assessed accurately as beginners, not experts.

Your solution was to create ‘building blocks’. How do these work?

Having done some research into the idea of the “curse of knowledge” - the assumption that others share the same knowledge as you and understand what you mean - I realised that although the GCSE questions could not be used, the assessment objectives could because they perfectly marry up to the skills we need our students to develop.

The next stage was breaking down these objectives into steps or “building blocks”.

Our first assessment objective in history is knowledge, for example, so our first block of knowledge is “to be able to identify new historical knowledge”. Broken down, this means the ability to say: “I knew that piece of knowledge before” or “I didn’t know that until this lesson”.

And how does this approach work in practice?

The building blocks are the foundation of the KS3 curriculum, schemes of work and lessons. Students have their own copy of the building blocks in their folders and staff show them the blocks they are working on in specific tasks, so they can track their own progress.

Assessments at the end of each scheme of work now assess the exact skills in the building blocks of each objective. For example, building block 1 of assessment objective 3 is “to know what a primary source is”. So, in the assessment, students are asked to choose the primary sources from four options.

This allows staff to see how they are developing in each assessment objective and tailor lessons to assist development in the blocks that students are not confident in.

How has this approach gone down with your students?

They have been really receptive to it, saying that their assessments in history make more sense to them than in other subjects. They don’t see their assessments as something new; they are a continuation of what has been happening in lessons. This means there is less for students to process in the assessments and it has clearly made them more comfortable.

The questions in each assessment are the same; however, the content is different. For example, students will be asked to tick which of four pictures or pieces of text are primary sources. The sources will be different each time depending on the work of that half term. If students answer the question correctly in three consecutive assessments, they do not need to answer it in following assessments, as I can trust that they can carry out this skill without teacher input. This has been a big motivator for some.

Has the process brought benefits for staff as well?

From a head of department perspective, this finally gives me incredibly accurate data about how good the KS3 cohort and individual students are at history. It has allowed me to focus lessons on particular assessment objectives that the data suggests students are not understanding, and put plans in place for intervention.

From a staff perspective, the assessments are quick and easy to mark, as the building blocks are the same in each assessment.

What has been challenging?

The most challenging part of the process was breaking down the assessment objectives to their cores. Obviously, we are all experts in our subjects but it is very difficult to remember the processes of learning to be experts.

What advice would you offer to other staff looking to implement something similar?

Start by breaking down the GCSE assessment objectives into what you want KS3 students to be able to accomplish and how they will show this. Weave these building blocks throughout your curriculum and schemes of work, and make sure the assessments test the building blocks. Then use the data to make decisions about differentiation and future lessons.

How is this impacting on the work your students are producing?

Students are becoming familiar with the process and enjoying the simplicity of it. Within my Year 7 lessons, students now regularly track their own progress on the building blocks within the lesson without me directing them to.

This makes it easy for me to assess progress throughout the lesson and, more importantly, for students to track their own progress. Students can see the path they need to travel to become experts in history and, honestly, it’s exhilarating to give them these resources and see them do this.

Samuel Atkinson-Sporle is head of history at Poltair School in Cornwall and a lecturer for PGCE trainees at the University of Exeter

This article originally appeared in the 16 April 2021 issue under the headline “How I...revolutionised KS3 assessment”