19th November 2021
HEADLINES
By James Saunders
THE IMPORTANCE OF ASSESSMENT AND DIAGNOSTIC FEEDBACK Staff have been busy marking our recent mock assessments over the last week. On top of this further cohorts have been completing end of unit assessments in a range of subjects. Assessment is a vital part of the learning journey. On its own it serves little purpose other than to give us a terminal outcome. Ultimately that is how everyone is assessed at the end of their GCSE journey, however, before then we have the ability to use assessment more purposefully. As part of the learning journey, any assessment and its resultant feedback offers something to the learner. If they are not happy with the outcome they still have time to do something about it and guidance as to where they need to concentrate their efforts. I have however, heard quite a few times comments such as this: ‘they are only mocks, not the real thing’; ‘it’s just an in class test’; ‘it doesn’t really mean anything anyway’; ‘they are not the grades I will get in the summer’; ‘I don’t like sitting exams’; ‘I can’t do it - I get anxious in exams’. These are not uncommon feelings toward this part of the curriculum and guess what? No one really likes exams - I know I don’t. However, I would argue that they are an important part of a learners journey. To unpick that, I have started to think about what the point of testing is in the first place. I started to think of the possible things that require a test: a driving test; a blood test; a test match; a fitness test; a crash test. A driving test checks whether you have met a certain standard of knowledge and skill to be able (trusted even) to drive independently. A blood test is designed to diagnose you - to test whether there is a problem. A test match is a simple test to see who can perform the best. A fitness test diagnoses
how fit you are. A crash test identifies weaknesses. So what is the point of a mock or a test? Well I think it is all of the above. Teachers will want to assess whether a learner has met a standard appropriate for their age - that they have made the right amount of progress; that they are able to independently master a certain body of knowledge and understanding. They will want to identify any problem areas so that they can then address these in their teaching. They will want to diagnose how much a learner has learnt and they will want to identify the weaknesses that need addressing. Sitting exams is tough. It is mentally and physically exhausting. It is perfectly normal to find this a struggle; to not want to do it in the first place. That gut wrenching feeling when entering an exam hall is very common. If you feel this you are not alone. Even today I feel this way if you put me in a high stakes test situation. However, what I have come to realise is that a little anxiety around exams and tests is quite normal. We want to do our best. We care. It means a lot to us. That’s why it can often cause us pain. But that pain is short, it does not last forever. In fact the only certainty regarding an exam is that after two hours it is over and so is the pain. Whatever your opinion is of the controversy surrounding the career of Lance Armstrong and the choices he made, I think the following words are of some relevance to what I have been talking about. ‘Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.’ I wish you all a lovely weekend. James Saunders