Teaching Standard 6: “Make accurate and productive use of assessment”

The standard

know and understand how to assess the relevant subject and curriculum areas, including statutory assessment requirements
make use of formative and summative assessment to secure pupils’ progress
use relevant data to monitor progress, set targets, and plan subsequent lessons
give pupils regular feedback, both orally and through accurate marking, and encourage pupils to respond to the feedback.

Learn that…

Effective assessment is critical to teaching because it provides teachers with information about pupils’ understanding and needs.
Good assessment helps teachers avoid being over-influenced by potentially misleading factors, such as how busy pupils appear.
Before using any assessment, teachers should be clear about the decision it will be used to support and be able to justify its use.
To be of value, teachers use information from assessments to inform the decisions they make; in turn, pupils must be able to act on feedback for it to have an effect.
High-quality feedback can be written or verbal; it is likely to be accurate and clear, encourage further effort, and provide specific guidance on how to improve.
Over time, feedback should support pupils to monitor and regulate their own learning.
Working with colleagues to identify efficient approaches to assessment is important; assessment can become onerous and have a disproportionate impact on workload.

Learn how to…

Avoid common assessment pitfalls, by:

Planning formative assessment tasks linked to lesson objectives and
thinking ahead about what would indicate understanding (e.g. by
using hinge questions to pinpoint knowledge gaps).
Drawing conclusions about what pupils have learned by looking at
patterns of performance over a number of assessments (e.g.
appreciating that assessments draw inferences about learning from
performance).
Choosing, where possible, externally validated materials, used in
controlled conditions when required to make summative
assessments.
Using available evidence to accurately identify what is required for individuals to meet their next steps and use this understanding to guide teaching adjustments for sub-group and individual pupils.

Check prior knowledge and understanding during lessons, by:

Using assessments to check for prior knowledge and pre-existing
misconceptions.
Structuring tasks and questions to enable the identification of
knowledge gaps and misconceptions (e.g. by using common
misconceptions within multiple-choice questions).
Prompting pupils to elaborate when responding to questioning to
check that a correct answer stems from secure understanding.
Monitoring pupil work during lessons, including checking for
misconceptions.

Provide high-quality feedback, by:

Focusing on specific actions for pupils and providing time for pupils
to respond to feedback.
Appreciating that pupils’ responses to feedback can vary depending
on a range of social factors (e.g. the message the feedback contains
or the age of the child).
Scaffolding self-assessment by sharing model work with pupils,
highlighting key details.
Thinking carefully about how to ensure feedback is specific and
helpful when using peer- or self-assessment.

Make marking manageable and effective, by:

Recording data only when it is useful for improving pupil outcomes.
Working with colleagues to identify efficient approaches to marking
and alternative approaches to providing feedback (e.g. using whole
class feedback or well supported peer- and self-assessment).
Using verbal feedback during lessons in place of written feedback
after lessons where possible.
Understanding that written marking is only one form of feedback.
Reducing the opportunity cost of marking (e.g. by using
abbreviations and codes in written feedback).
Prioritising the highlighting of errors related to misunderstandings,
rather than careless mistakes, when marking.

The text above is taken from the Teachers’ Standards and the ITTECF Combined Framework. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0 and v3.0.

‘Mark, Plan, Teach’ (Ross McGill)
‘Teacher feedback to improve pupil learning’ (EEF)
Hinge questions:
- How To Use Hinge Questions In Your Lessons To Move All Students Forward (Hannah Searle at Third Space Learning)
- Hinge questions hub (Harry Fletcher-Wood)
Develop your use of multiple choice questions:
- ‘Why use multiple-choice questions?’ (Joe Kirby)
- ‘Layers of assessment’ (MrBdB) – using MCQs as a pre-test assessment
- ‘Improving multiple-choice questioning’ (Blake Harvard)
- A Twitter thread with lots of relevant blog posts collected by Kate Jones
- Subject examples: English (Twitter thread, @fwalker_f), maths (Jo Morgan)