Keynote Presentation by Dr Tina Issacs at the First Quality Assurance Authority for Education and Training (QAAET) - 9 & 10 February 2011 - Bahrain

1. The Purposes of
ssessment
Quality Education & Training:
Sunday, February 13, 2011 1
Towards a Better Future

2. It’s the economy, stupid (Clinton campaign slogan,
1992)
James Callaghan, Ruskin College speech, 18 Oct
1976
I am concerned on my journeys to find complaints
from industry that new recruits from the schools
sometimes do not have the basic tools to do the
job that is required….to the teacher, I would say
that you must satisfy the parents and industry that
what you are doing meets their requirements and
the needs of our children.
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

3. Three questions to ask of any assessment:
1. What is the principal purpose of this
assessment?
2. Is the form of the assessment fit for
purpose?
3. Does it achieve its purpose?
Three broad groupings:
1. Selection and certification
2. Determining and raising standards
3. Formative assessment – assessment for
learning
Quality Education & Training:
3 Towards a Better Future

4. Assessment = the process of firstly gathering
evidence, and secondly interpreting that evidence in
the light of some defined criterion in order to form a
judgement (Harlen, 1994)
Why do we assess? (P. Black et al, 1987):
• Diagnostic assessment to identify students’ learning needs
• Formative assessment to support and encourage learning
• Summative assessment to identify learning outcomes
• Evaluative assessment which is directed at assessing the
quality of provision in institutions and in the system as a
whole
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

5. • Certification of achievement (competence)
• Selection (competition)
• The evaluation of provision (content)
• The control of both individual aspirations and systemic
functioning (control)
Importance of the relationship between curriculum and assessment
Who assesses (teachers, students themselves, government)?
What is assessed (knowledge, practical skills, social/emotional
skills)?
When to assess (for formative purposes, as summative use)?
How to assess (norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, ipsative)?
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

6. Chinese civil service selection tests 1st century
A.D. – early 20th century
• High point during Ming dynasty (1368 – 1662)
• Relied on rote knowledge
• Extremely low pass rate
• Despite extraordinary security, people still found
ways to cheat
• Still, ‘it is estimated that up to 60 percent of the
successful candidates came from families that were
not part of the administrative elite’ (Stobart 2008)
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

7. 19th Century enthusiasm for testing
• Antithesis of corruption and patronage
• Testing of basic abilities as well as attainments and
skills
• Ability = merit
• Talent = virtue
Quality Education & Training:
7 Towards a Better Future

8. Diagnostic assessment
• Origins in ascertaining who would profit from
specialist schooling
• Alfred Binet 1905 – 1908, one to one diagnostics,
spatial, verbal and numerical sub-tests
• US and Great Britain change to written IQ tests –
assumption that intelligence is fixed
Assessment to set and raise standards
• Entrance examinations to universities
• Backwash effect on curriculum
Assessment as accountability
• Payment by results
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

9. The children … were drilled in the contents of those books until they knew
them almost by heart. In arithmetic they worked abstract sums, in obedience
to formal rules, day after day, and month after month; and they were put up
to various tricks and dodges which would, it was hoped, enable them to
know by what precise rules the various questions on the arithmetic card
were to be answered.
Not a thought was given, except in a small minority of schools, to the real
training of the child, to the fostering of his mental (and other) growth. To
get him through the yearly examination by hook or by crook was the one
concern of the teacher.
As profound distrust of the teacher was the basis of the policy of the
department, so profound distrust of the child was the basis of the policy of
the teachers.
To leave the child to find anything out for himself, to think out anything for
himself, would have been regarded as proof of incapacity, no to say insanity,
on the part of the teacher, and would have led to results which, from the
‘percentage’ point of view, would probably have been disastrous.
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

10. • The term ‘assessment purpose’ can be interpreted in
a variety of different ways: judgement level;
decision level; impact level
• The uses to which assessment results are put are
often categorized misleadingly
Purposes/uses
Where assessment systems are supposed to
support more than one purpose, the purposes
must be prioritized
•
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

11. • Distinction between formative and summative
assessment is spurious
• Summative characterises a type of assessment
judgement = summing up appraisal of
performance
• Formative characterises a type of use to which
assessment judgements are put = using
assessment to achieve a formative purpose,
which can include summative assessment
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

12. student monitoring
to decide whether students are making sufficient
progress in attainment in relation to expectations or
targets; and, potentially, to allocate rewards or sanctions
formative
to identify students’ proximal learning needs, guiding
subsequent teaching
social evaluation
to judge the social or personal value of students’
achievements
diagnosis
to clarify the type and extent of students’ learning
difficulties in light of well-established criteria, for
intervention
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

13. provision eligibility
to determine whether students meet eligibility criteria
for special educational provision
screening
to identify students who differ significantly from their
peers, for further assessment
segregation
to segregate students into homogeneous groups, on
the basis of aptitudes or attainments, to make the
instructional process more straightforward
guidance
to identify the most suitable courses, or vocations for
students to pursue, given their aptitudes
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

14. transfer
to identify the general educational needs of students who
transfer to new schools
placement
to locate students with respect to their position in a
specified learning sequence, to identify the level of course
which most closely reflects it
qualification
to decide whether students are sufficiently qualified for a
job, course or role in life – that is, whether they are
equipped to succeed in it – and whether to enrol them or
to appoint them to it
selection
to predict which students – all of whom might, in principle,
be sufficiently qualified – will be the most successful in a
job, course or role in life, and to select between them
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

15. licensing
to provide legal evidence – the licence – of minimum
competence to practice a specialist activity, to warrant
stakeholder trust in the practitioner
certification
to provide evidence – the certificate – of higher
competence to practice a specialist activity, or subset
thereof, to warrant stakeholder trust in the practitioner
school choice
to identify the most desirable school for a child to attend
institution monitoring
to decide whether institutional performance – relating to
individual teachers, classes or schools – is rising or falling
in relation to expectations or targets; and, potentially, to
allocate rewards or sanctions
Quality Education & Training:
15 Towards a Better Future

16. resource allocation
to identify institutional needs and, consequently, to allocate
resources
organizational intervention
to identify institutional failure and, consequently, to justify
intervention
programme evaluation
to evaluate the success of educational programmes or
initiatives, nationally or locally
system monitoring
to decide whether system performance – relating to
individual regions or the nation – is rising or falling in relation
to expectations or targets; and, potentially, to allocate
rewards or sanctions
comparability
to guide decisions on comparability of examination standards
for later assessments on the basis of cohort performance in
earlier ones
national accounting
to ‘quality adjust’ education output indicators
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future

17. Any questions?
t.isaacs@ioe.ac.uk
Quality Education & Training:
Towards a Better Future