Assessment is an important part of any education system. Without assessment, we cannot be sure that students are learning anything, because, as many countries h...
One of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks facing teachers is the assessment of extended pieces of writing. This article will outline some of the challe...
Comparative judgement is not a new method of assessment. It was first proposed by LL Thurstone (1927) as a means of describing 'the processes of human judgement...
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the need to help young people develop their abilities to use spoken language effectively. Emp...
What are tests and questioning good for?
Jonathan Firth
The 'testing effect', widely referred to now as 'retrieval practice', is a well-known psychological ph...
Nothing polarises a staffroom discussion more than technology. The moment interactive whiteboards, virtual learning environments or mobile devices are brought ...
The professional context and challenge
Learn Academies Trust (Learn-AT) launched in September 2016 with seven primary schools. In the first year of operation, ...
‘Smart is not something you are, smart is something you get’ (Wiliam, 2013a).
What is formative assessment?
There is more than 40 years’ research evidence to ...
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) reported this year that 45 per cent of young teachers have concerns over their mental health and are considering leaving th...
Imagine what a difference it would make if children knew what they were good at and what they had to do to improve.' With these stirring words, our trainer exto...
For four years I have taught in a wide variety of schools and I have always been confused about how we use the word 'validity'. I knew the word had something to...
Feedback seems extremely powerful. It is 'among the most common features of successful teaching and learning' with an average effect size of 0.79, 'twice th...
The issue that teachers face
Questions are an integral part of classroom life and essential to every teacher’s pedagogical repertoire. They are also one of the...
Assessment for learning (AfL) strategies, closely associated with formative assessment, aim to enable students to independently assess their own learning, mov...
My title comes from a comment made by a teacher who attended the first development day for the Teacher Assessment in Primary Science (TAPS) project, an ongoing ...
One of the proposals in the Department for Education’s (DfE) recent consultation on primary assessment is to introduce a school-entry assessment to act as a bas...
Teachers should be able to meet the demands of the classroom; in the language of teaching quality research, they should have the required ‘competences’ to be ef...
I had some concerns about the marking system used for Key Stage 3 in my school when I joined two years ago. It followed the general policy that classwork would ...
The EEF looks at how better evidence could help to reduce teacher workload.
The Education Endowment Foundation is an independent charity dedicated to breaking ...
When the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Oxford University Department of Education released the report A Marked Improvement (Elliott et al., 20...
