Renewed Calls for Equitable Assessment

Two years of disruption to assessment and grading has shone solely needed light onto the pre-existing assessment system across the UK. The Independent Assessment Commission (IAC), drawn together by the National Education Union (NEU) set out to review the system of qualifications and accreditations to look at how this can be made more equitable.

The membership of the commission reflects the views of education professionals, parents and students, policy designers, researchers, and those with influence in sustainable change and social justice. The IAC consulted a wide range of participants, both nationally and internationally, and also drew insights from their own knowledge and expertise to produce their final report.

England’s assessment system relies heavily on exam-based assessment. The IAC considered the features of the current system and much-needed improvements to better support all learners to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.

The IAC has proposed ten recommendations to create equitable and reliable assessments and qualifications which enable students to thrive.

1. Recognise every student’s achievements. Create a more equitable and reliable assessment system that optimises the potential and protects the health and wellbeing of all England’s young people.
2. Use the broad consensus for change that exists to initiate a national conversation on education with a particular focus on equitable, reliable assessment. Use the vision and principles in this report to stimulate that conversation. 
3. Design learning experiences and qualifications that encourage students to become critical, inquisitive, creative, autonomous and problem-solving learners, that better support their progression into employment, further and higher education and inspire lifelong and inter-disciplinary learning. 
4. Identify reliable, alternative, blended approaches to assessment that rigorously gather evidence of student achievement and competence. End high-stakes examinations as the only mode of assessing student achievement. Alternative approaches should be developed and trialled with schools to ensure that any new approach takes teacher capacity into consideration.  
5. Deploy existing and emergent technologies to support high quality student experiences in assessment and qualifications.  
6. Plan coherent pathways for all of England’s young people between school, college, university and employment that include a coherent 14-19 assessment and qualification experience. GCSEs in their present form, where the qualification is based solely on highstakes examinations, need to change fundamentally.  
7. Focus on qualifications as outcomes. Assessment should not be based around a fixed age of 16. Students should have opportunities to demonstrate achievements when ready throughout education 14-19.  
8. Design an integrated qualifications system that offers every student opportunities to include ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ elements seamlessly alongside accreditation for skill development, extended inter-disciplinary study and community contribution.  
9. Build a system of accountability that uses evidence to inform improvement and ends judgemental categorisation of schools.  
10. Recognise that successful, sustainable change requires genuine stakeholder engagement including all the communities which have been part of this commission.

The stakeholder engagement should naturally include the children and young people for whom the qualifications are being designed.

For all learners and especially those with SEND, all of the above recommendations will provide more opportunities for them to show their strengths and address an antiquated unreliable assessment system with questionable validity. For schools this allows more creativity in planning the curriculum and offer more engaging and personalised programmes for their students.