By last summer, primary assessment had become an incoherent mess. Constant tinkering, without any sense of a masterplan, has led to a confusing system of statutory assessment that serves no one, least of all the government. It distorts the curriculum, is time- and resource-intensive and distracts attention away from focusing on the day job of teaching. To put it another way, statutory assessment is doing more harm than good.
Earlier this year, the Assessment Review Group - an independent panel of experts convened by the NAHT headteachers’ union - published the “Redressing the Balance” report. As its name suggests, the report calls for testing to be stripped back to a bare minimum to create more space - from Reception to Year 6 - for teachers to teach, out of the shadow of government tests. It appears that the government was paying attention.
While education secretary Justine Greening’s recent announcement on the future of primary assessment stopped short of being a full “reset to factory settings”, it did appear to show greater ambition than patching up a broken system (“Government proposes scrapping tests for 7-year-olds”, bit.ly/GreeningPrimary). And for the first time in years, we are looking at a retreat from the rising tide of testing.
Preliminary findings of a survey of NAHT members to ask their views on the government’s proposals make very interesting reading. Some will come as little surprise: most school leaders are in favour of ending key stage 1 Sats, with around four in every five respondents supporting the proposal to make the tests non-statutory.
There is overwhelming support for changing the current “secure fit” judgement of a student’s writing to return to “best fit” (around 95 per cent of responses to date), with a similarly high proportion of respondents supporting the call for this to happen for the 2017-18 academic year and no later. School leaders also appear to support our view that it is a mistake for government to press ahead with times-tables tests.
In other areas there is less certainty. Some 76 per cent of respondents said that KS1 teacher assessments should not continue to be used as the baseline for a school accountability measure. But for others the jury is out when it comes to a reintroduced baseline in the Reception year, and they will need to be convinced by the detail of proposals.
Backing the baseline
The simple truth is that future governments are not going to stop holding schools to account for standards. That means we face a stark choice between accountability based on raw attainment or on progress made. If we accept the latter to be preferable, then the question is not whether we should have a baseline, but when it should be taken.
The argument follows that the baseline measure should be taken as early as is practicable in order to properly acknowledge the progress made in the critical first years of school. The key point of emphasis here is the notion of “practicable”, and, to galvanise support, the new baseline will need to pass some tests of our own.
Young children need to be given sufficient time to become familiar with the new school context and routine. Assessments made before children have had a chance to take their coats off are unlikely to be reliable and could well get in the way of them settling in.
The new baseline needs to assess the right things in the right ways, and many people will be keen to see reflection of the importance of early social-emotional skills as well as early reading, writing and numeracy skills. And we have no desire for children to take formal tests at such a young age - some form of observational teacher assessment is clearly better than frogmarching five-year-olds through a selection of box-ticking exercises that satisfy only Whitehall bureaucrats.
A new Reception baseline must be properly designed and implemented for it to gain any support among teachers and school leaders.
There are aspects of the assessment consultation where I would like to see the government move further and faster (for example, replacing whole cohort phonic and times tables checks with national sampling). Overall though, as long as promises translate into action, then this is a big step in the right direction.
The fear factor
The truth is, however, that assessment reform cannot happen in isolation. We need to address how the data from statutory assessments is used. Over-reliance on statutory assessment data for accountability purposes raises the stakes of tests and ultimately distorts curriculum emphasis and outcomes. Floor and coasting standards cast a shadow of fear over many schools and school leaders.
Poor test results can trigger an avalanche of interventions, based on a presumption of school failure, which are distracting at best and career-ending at worst. Until there is universal acceptance of the inherent limitations of any data collected, even the best assessment system risks becoming twisted and skewed.
Assessment remains a vital part of school activity and our hope is that, after several difficult years, but thanks to some really constructive recent talks with the Department for Education, we are now moving towards a system that teachers, parents and pupils can have faith in.
Greening has shown a desire to listen and a willingness to set right mistakes of recent years. We can only hope that the general election and what happens afterwards doesn’t derail the progress that we’ve been making lately. That would be a disaster for many schools and children.
Nick Brook is deputy general secretary at the NAHT headteachers’ union. The NAHT has contacted all of its members to help determine its formal response to the government consultation. Its survey closes on Monday, and members can complete it by visiting bit.ly/NAHTprimary
