Introduction
A national curriculum was introduced in England and Wales for the first time in 1988. It applies to all pupils attending state schools during the period οf compulsory education from age five to age 16.
At the end of each key stage statutory assessment of pupils takes place involving both externally written tests and teacher assessment. At key stages 1, 2, and 3 the tests are the same for all pupils in the country. At key stage 4, the tests are the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations which are organized and administered by several examination boards, and schools are free to choose the board they wish to use. Except οf key stage 1, the tests consist of formal, timed papers taken under strict examination conditions and marked by external examiners. The teacher assessments are intended to take into account the classwork, homework, and other information obtained by the teachers during the key stage.
The attainment of pupils at the end of key stages 1-3 are reported in terms of οf levels. Currently, there are eight levels with an opportunity for exceptional performance above level 8 to be reported. The national curriculum contains descriptions of each level which are intended to guide teachers in making their teacher assessments. GCSE performance at the end of key stage 4 is reported using lettered grades A*-G. A* has been introduced recently to represent an exceptional performance above that of grade A.
The introduction of the national curriculum
The introduction of the national curriculum and its associated testing arrangements has caused much anxiety, confusion, and eventual antagonism on the part of οf teachers. An indication of the difficulties encountered is that we are now coping with the third version of the science curriculum in seven years. This is not the place to go into this in detail, but a good description of the establishment of the testing arrangements about the national curriculum and οf the difficulties encountered is given by Black (1994).
Teacher as Evaluator
In the planning of the national curriculum in England and Wales, the Task Group on Assessment and Testing (Department for Education and Science, 1988) identified four purposes of assessment in schools: formative, diagnostic, summative, and evaluative. The formative purpose emphasizes the positive achievements of pupils in helping them to make progress, the diagnostic purpose emphasizes the identification of weaknesses and misunderstandings so that they may be put right.
Both formative assessment and diagnostic assessment are essential, planned, and integral parts οf teaching. They are continuous processes whose main aim is to help pupils to make progress. This means the results of the assessment should be used to achieve this aim, not just recorded, and they should be used by both teachers and pupils.
Summative assessment, as its name implies, comes at the end (of a unit, of a term, of a year, οf schooling, etc) and it attempts to summarise the performance of pupils at that stage so that reports can be made. A major difference between formative and summative is that the latter involves no feedback to pupils to help them improve.
The evaluative purpose of assessment says something about the performance of teachers or institutions. Recently the emphasis given to the publication in England οf league tables of examination results enabling comparisons of schools to take place has increased the importance of the evaluative purpose of assessment.
Teaching Business Ethics
Teacher assessment, sometimes called coursework assessment, is an integral part οf the GCSE examination taken at the age of 16. It is also required for the reports made at ages 7, 11, and 14 (at the end of key stages 1, 2, and 3). The reports on individual pupils go to parents and other teachers. Aggregated reports for whole schools are intended to be made public but there is currently an interregnum in these arrangements at ages 7, 11, and 14 as the government plans how to take account of the large-scale opposition shown by teachers to the testing procedures.
The emphasis in these uses of teacher assessment is, thus, summative, and many teachers have this restricted view οf it. However, inevitably and inescapably, formative assessment is an assessment done by teachers, and so this is also teacher assessment. While less in evidence, perhaps because of a perceived lack of objectivity, nevertheless it is clear that the results of teacher assessment could be used for evaluative purposes.
Teacher assessment, therefore, has formative, diagnostic, summative, and evaluative purposes. It is important to remember this because there is increasing evidence, as we will indicate below, that teachers are tending to concentrate on the summative purpose at the expense of formative and diagnostic purposes.
References
Black, P. J. (1994). Performance assessment and accountability: The experience in England and Wales. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 16 (2), 191-203.
Department οf Education and Science. (1988). National curriculum: Task group on assessment and testing: A report. London: Department of Education and Science and Welsh Office.
Marshall, B. (1995). Teacher assessment in national curriculum English. In B. Fairbrother, P. Black, & P. Gill (Eds.), Teachers assessing pupils: Lessons from science classrooms. Hatfield: Association for Science Education.
Painter, R. (1994). Testing time for industry. The Sunday Times. Section 4, p.9.
Swain, J. (1995). Survey on national curriculum statutory assessment in science. In B. Fairbrother, P. Black, & P. Gill (Eds.), Teachers assessing pupils: Lessons from science classrooms. Hatfield: Association for Science Education.