Assessment And Testing In The Primary School

Colin Conner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781850005513
• eBook ISBN: 9781135388379
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 2004. The terms 'assessment' and 'testing' conjure up all sorts of images in most people's minds. Rows of desks in quiet halls, working to the clock, trying to remember the answers to obscure and sometimes irrelevant questions. Recent invitations to teachers to reflect upon an occasion when they remember being assessed or tested drew up long-forgotten memories of the 11-plus or taking a first driving test. Often these were memories tinged with unhappiness, sadness and a feeling of failure. Assessment for many of us has been an emotional experience and it is not surprising that we should reject facing children with such experiences too early in their lives. This book looks at assessment as a positive experience in the primary classroom, as a fundamental feature of teaching and successful learning

Chapter 1
Exploring Teachers’ Views about Assessment

What is assessment?

Why do we do it?

Who is it for?

These three questions have been used as part of a practical activity for groups of teachers in recent in-service courses on assessment. The answers that have been produced are an indication of the age we presently live in. It is an age of accountability, where testing and assessment are central procedures for establishing and monitoring that accountability process. The fact that some educationalists believe that primary schools in the past have not been particularly effective in this area is demonstrated by a recent comment from the Chief HMI Eric Bolton, who suggested:

In secondary education there is a long history of debate and practice in respect of both the curriculum and examinations. Neither is as true of primary eduction. It is difficult to identify sufficient common ground, or at least common language, to begin to discuss the primary curriculum nationally, let alone carry out the kind of scrutiny and development required to establish a primary curricular framework and agreed objectives. (Bolton, 1985:36)

Assessment and testing should not be seen as an immediate response to such critical comments, however, but as a central feature of the teaching and learning process. By careful consideration of assessment procedures we can improve children’s learning experiences as well as satisfy the demands of accountability. However, more of that later. To return to the three questions posed at the head of this chapter, the responses of teachers to them have been wide-ranging, as can be seen by what follows. As far as the first question is concerned, a variety of responses have emerged.

What Is Assessment?

• — ‘It’s to do with testing’
• — ‘How good you are at something’
• — ‘I use it to keep a check on my children, by spelling tests, table tests and things like that’
• — ‘It’s like going back to the 11+all over again; hoops for the children to jump through’
• — ‘Assessment is an on-going process which focuses on the whole life of our school. “Are we being effective?” is the central issue and one of increasing national importance’
• — ‘I feel as though it’s a big stick hanging over our heads, teacher appraisal and all that’
• — ‘Diagnosing strengths and weaknesses’
• — ‘I use tests in my classroom. I also use quizzes—as a way of keeping a check on the children’ learning. I also mark their work, sometimes with a grade but usually a comment’
• — ‘Our LEA does our main assessment with tests at 7 to check up on children’s progress in maths, English and reading to see who needs extra help’
• — ‘Assessment is to do with record-keeping: information about how well the children are doing’
• — ‘Isn’t it something to do with evaluation?’
• — ‘The Educational Psychologist does most of our formal assessment. He’s very difficult to get hold of though!’

Reflection upon these comments, which are fairly typical, indicates a confusion particularly about terms such as assessment, evaluation, appraisal, testing and accountability, all of which are part of the full assessment picture, as it is hoped later sections of this book will demonstrate.

Many of the interpretations represented in the teachers’ comments are included in the definition of assessment offered by the recently established Task Group on Assessment and Testing (affectionately known as TeeGAT), where they described assessment as:

A general term enhancing all methods customarily used to appraise performance of an individual pupil or a group. It may refer to a broad appraisal including many sources of evidence and many aspects of a pupil’s knowledge, understanding, skills and attitudes; or to a particular occasion or instrument. An assessment instrument may be any method or procedure, formal or informal, for producing information about pupils: e.g. a written test paper, an interview schedule, a measurement task using equipment, a class quiz. (DES 1988: Preface and Glossary)

Ainscow argues that there is considerable confusion amongst many teachers about the nature and purpose of assessment, primarily as a result of the varied intentions associated with any assessment activity. Assessment, he suggests, can be to do with:

providing information for colleagues
recording work carried out by pupils
giving grades or marks
helping pupils review their learning
evaluating the effectiveness of teaching
helping teachers to plan
the identification of pupils experiencing difficulty
maintaining standards
providing information for others outside the school (e.g. parents, LEAs, employers) (Ainscow, 1988)

With such a variety of potential purposes it is inevitable that the appropriateness of an assessment procedure will be influenced by the original purpose of the assessment and the intended audience of the results.

In other words, when considering what forms of assessment to use in any situation it is necessary first of all to consider two fundamental questions. These are, ‘What information is needed? and, ‘Who needs to know?’ (Ainscow, 1988)

In their discussions in this area, HMI have suggested that assessment of pupils’ work has four main purposes:

1. to provide pupils with an indication of their individual achievements and progress;
2. to help the teacher identify areas of strength and weakness in learning and adjust subsequent teaching in the light of this;
3. to enable pupils to evaluate ways in which they can improve;
4. to show others what standards of work have been achieved. (HMSO, 1988)

Norman Thomas, in another book in this series (1990), has suggested that assessment in primary schools in the past has taken three main forms; informal assessment, formal processes or tests, and summary assessment.

Informal assessment is that which is continually collected in the course of daily teaching. As Bentley and Malvern comment:

Teachers make assessments all the time. Sometimes they are full and formal, resulting in a mark, a grade, or a certificate. But they are often a matter of the moment, a check as to who is keeping up with the work, and the reward is no more than a smile or a frown, a nod of the head or an encouraging word…In our view, assessment is part and parcel of the teacher’s service to pupils, not merely as motivation and reward, but as a direct contribution to the children’s growing awareness and appreciation of themselves. (Bentley and Malvern, 1983)

The second kind of assessment identified by Thomas describes the more formal exercises undertaken by children, which are devised and set by the teacher, or by people who may never have seen or worked with the children. He suggests that:

When they are set, the teacher and children know that the occasion is special in that the process of teaching is abandoned for the time being. The children must rely on their own resources and expect no help. (Thomas, 1990)

Some of these procedures are likely to be ‘standardized’ either by the format being undertaken in a prescribed manner, or the results being compared with a group chosen to be representative of a wider population of children often of a similar age or aptitude.

The final category identified by Thomas describes those attempts to draw together perceptions of children’s progress over time—i.e. over a week, a term or a year—and when these are entered into some kind of permanent record.

Thomas also offers an additional category, which arises from developments in National Curriculum assessment. The standard assessment of the National Curriculum, he suggests:

…ought not to look like tests to the children and should, like teachers’ informal assessments, be concerned with identifying what children can do… In some ways they may look like minischemes of work. They will be standardized in the sense that they should be presented and marked in prescribed ways, (ibid.)

Further detail as to exactly what is included in assessment comes from Macintosh and Hale (1976), who suggest that teaching and assessment are inseparable and include all or some of the following elements: diagnosis, guidance, grading, selection, prediction, and evaluation.

Each of these characteristics was represented in the teachers’ responses to the other two questions raised earlier: why do we do it? and who is it for?

Why Do We Do It?

It can further improve the effectiveness of the learning situation by presenting positive feedback to pupils and providing information necessary to ensure continuity at all stages. (London Borough of Hillingdon, 1988)

Teacher responses to the question, why do we do it? offered the following typical comments. An attempt has been made to classify each of them using the criteria identified by Macintosh and Hale:

‘To evaluate our planning and the effectiveness of our teaching.’ (evaluation)
‘For reinforcement and feedback to the children, so that they know how they’re getting on.’ (diagnosis and guidance)
‘To know where we are going.’ (guidance/prediction)
‘To find out what and how much children are learning; an indication of their progress, and how they compare with others.’ (diagnosis, grading)
‘To know what to do next.’ (prediction, selection)
‘Diagnostic—to highlight strengths and weaknesses.’ (diagnosis) ‘To aid continuity, provide information for the next teacher and ensure a broad, balanced curriculum.’ (guidance, prediction)
‘As a form of self-evaluation about one’s own teaching.’ (evaluation)
‘To provide information for the parents about their children’s progress.’ (evaluation) ‘To satisfy legal requirements, in the future especially. It’s part of a school’s accountability.’ (evaluation)
‘For some of our children, I have to admit, it is to help them move to independent schools.’ (selection)

Thomas endorses many of these suggestions and identifies four main purposes of assessment:

1. to inform the current teacher and to enable him/her to decide what a child should do next;
2. to inform the children about their own progress;
3. to inform others about the progress of individual children (e.g. parents, the next teacher(s), educational psychologists);
4. to provide information for the public. (Thomas, 1990)

As far as the first purpose is concerned, Thomas reminds us that informing the teacher about the next stage in learning is a highly skilled activity and is more complex than we realize. He illustrates this by discussing the implications for the child who has demonstrated that s/he can do what is asked. He suggests that three possible reactions emerge from such a diagnosis. We can offer the child more of the same, a response which has led HMI and others to comment that children are often doing work which is insufficiently demanding. Alternatively, we can provide the child with more difficult work of the same kind, inviting the use of skills and ideas already developed and as a result extending them. Another course of action is to deci...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• List of Figures
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Exploring Teachers’ Views about Assessment
• Chapter 2: Assessment, Testing and the National Curriculum
• Chapter 3: Two Steps Backwards, One Step Forwards? The Implications of Testing and Assessment for the Primary School
• Chapter 4: Strategies for Assessment: Observation
• Chapter 5: Other Ways In: A Research-based Approach to Assessment
• Chapter 6: Recording and Reporting Assessments
• Chapter 7: Towards a Policy for Assessment
• Chapter 8: Case Studies of Assessment in Action
• Chapter 9: Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Bibliography