Let’s not get confused. In ICT, the word “assessment” is used quite loosely to mean either software that deals with assessment data – and there’s plenty of that about - or actual assessment by tasks on the computer screen. The latter we’ll call “e-assessment” or “on-screen assessment”, which is what we’re talking about here.
E-assessment is walking the virtual streets, and if it hasn’t come through your school gate already then it soon will. Last summer term 45,000 pupils in 400 schools took part in the first nationwide pilot of an on-screen test for key stage 3 ICT. The report on the pilot from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) makes interesting reading because it’s possible to discern within it some pointers to what schools need to be thinking about as the pace of the move to e-assessment – and e-learning generally – starts to pick up.
Next summer, most schools will take part in a further pilot. Then, in 2007, all schools will be involved in a full-scale dry run. Finally, in 2008, the test will become statutory. By then, it is hoped and expected, everything will be running smoothly.
The QCA is setting the pace in this area. Not only is it in a statutory position to do so, but its products, exemplified by the KS3 ICT test, are acknowledged as excellent. In November 2005, the QCA’s KS3 ICT test was recognised by the wider business and ICT community when it won the Computing Awards for Excellence “Innovative Project of the Year” award. The best advice for any head or teacher wanting to learn about e-assessment is to start by looking at QCA’s work (even if at the moment you’re not in the sector affected by it), and particularly at the KS3 test. You should also visit the BETT stand, and use the QCA and Becta websites and helplines.
The official report of the test’s pilot records general optimism – particularly about the response of the children. “The kids in general were very keen and excited about taking the test… students who weren’t allocated to a test were actually asking if they could take part,” reports one teacher.
At the same time, there were clearly some problems. That’s what pilots are all about, but it’s clear, talking to Martin Ripley, departing head of strategy at QCA, that he’s worried by the state of preparedness of some schools for what’s coming. “Forty to fifty percent of our work is getting schools ready,” he says. “Schools know a new test is coming but they think they can wait a bit. In fact, it’s going to take two years to get themselves ready.”
There are technical considerations of course – networks have to be up to the task, and the QCA requires a careful technical audit, using a tool it provides, before a school can take part.
The real issues, though, are to do with management – of staff, resources and the curriculum. Moving to e-assessment, in whatever form, makes demands that simply haven’t existed in the sort of tests and exams that teachers have been used to, and for which they’ve had years to hone systems. It’s really important that schools take these differences on board, because e-assessment isn’t going to stop at one test in one subject, and there are implications for just about everything that happens in a school.
So here’s my list of the matters that school management ought to be looking at, both for the KS3 ICT test, and in planning for e-assessment generally.
Management of staff
E-assessment involves three categories of staff – teachers, support staff and technical staff. (The QCA defines the roles, for the 2006 ICT KS3 pilot, as “technical manager”, “pupil manager”, “test manager” and “test administrator” – but who takes on these tasks is a matter for the school to decide.)
Between them, the staff have to:
Invigilate during a test or an assessed task;
Ensure that the infrastructure and the software are up to the task and working;
Ensure that the children are prepared and that they understand what they have to do;
Put the right children in the right place at the right time.
How these tasks – and the many smaller jobs that arise from them – are allocated raises lots of questions. Who, for example, will lead the process? Is that a job for a teacher or an administrator? And does invigilation require a subject specialist teacher or not? Everything has to be worked through in school, with good consultation and a readiness to make adjustments in the light of experience and – important - of the workload agreement.
Schools preparing for the ICT test in 2006 should have tackled this already. Any school waiting for 2007 needs to start looking at it now. (No school, in the view of QCA, should wait for statutory testing in 2008 before trying the test.)
Waiting for the KS3 test to drive events is the default position. Ideally, schools will be ahead of the game, thinking already how staffing and management will work in a new world of learning.
Management of time
In the 2005 KS3 ICT pilot a number of schools found it difficult to fit the tests - two, of 50 minutes each – into timetabled one-hour lessons. One teacher, on the TES Staffroom site, suggests: “Conservatively, I’d go for an hour and a quarter per session. You can give extra time to pupils that need it as well – may be useful to have all those in another room.”
Arguably, as more e-assessment arrives, schools will become progressively more bogged down in timetabling problems. But the idea, surely, is that e-learning/assessment will bring freedom and flexibility into learning. The goal, somewhere down the line, is “when ready” testing - each pupil taking the statutory test at what’s judged to be the right time for the individual.
Martin Ripley realises this is going to be more difficult in a school than, say, a college, and says that the QCA intends to work with schools to see how it might work. “We need them to help us understand what the school version of ‘when ready’ can be. We want to look at best practice in schools that come up with ideas on this.”
What’s certainly true is that if schools allow e-assessment to become an irksome extra constraint on the traditional timetable, then the vision is failing somewhere.
Management of resources
Infrastructure, in the form of computer hardware, software, network connections and the like, we’ve mentioned already. There are also questions around provision of rooms and other working spaces, and their availability during the day, as well as before and after hours. E-learning/assessment will drive a coach and horses through the idea that you can provide for 100 children by allocating four rooms each holding 25. It has to be a lot more fluid than that, and it follows that each school should have a premises plan that questions every decision (from redecoration to the placing of shelves and power points, and the planning of new buildings) in light of the need to be future-proof.
Management of the curriculum
At one level it’s a matter of making sure children doing the forthcoming ICT test have actually covered the curriculum. The pilot found some schools where children were at a disadvantage because they hadn’t covered all the work.
More broadly, it will make sense to build practice tests and a general awareness of the e-learning/assessment environment in day-to-day work. Children have to become competent not just with the content of their tests, but with how they’re presented. That means doing practice tests and discussing them with their teachers.
Keep options open
The QCA's vision of a broad range of e-assessment by 2009 calls for schools that are ready and willing to try different approaches – maybe releasing unsuspected talent in both pupils and staff. The need will be for open, accepting attitudes, lots of talk, lots of giving way and listening, and lots of awareness of what’s to be learned from, and shared with, other schools and institutions.
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Links
If you’re interested in taking part in the next pilot.
www.ks3ictpilot.com
Commercial products
Most commercial providers go beyond straight assessment and include either a continuing formative element, or a means of recording and reporting results, or both. These are just some examples.
BETT Contacts
QCA Stand Y36
qca.org.uk/eassessment
Includes a download of the Pilot report.
Becta Stand X40
Support for schools running the ICT test. It is also worth searching for Martin Ripley’s 2004 presentation on e-assessment on this site.
www.becta.org.uk/schools/ks3support
Maps
TAG Learning Stand F50
A proven system, favourably reviewed several times in The TES, for running a system of online ICT assessment portfolios.
Tel: 01474 537886
www.maps-ict.com
Progress in Maths 6–14 Digital
nferNelson - Granada Learning Stand E40 F40
Launched at BETT, this is an online version of the company’s existing series of standardised tests for ages 6–14. Many schools track their pupils using Nfer tests, and with statutory online assessment coming along it makes sense to give children experience of the medium.
Tel: 0845 602 1937
www.nfer-nelson.co.uk
Achieve
Harcourt Education Stand Y10
This e-assessment product, which is being launched at BETT, is described as a “whole school assessment for learning solution”.
Tel: 01865 314405
www.harcourtassessment.co.uk |
