Amanda Spielman On Assessment

[00:00:23] An hour and a half talking about assessment is my idea of heaven!

[00:00:26] Well, also, as you can tell, so this is amazing.

[00:00:36] It's really important to think about assessment as curriculum protection, curriculum definition

[00:00:42] and protection as well as something that provides some results and grades out the far end.

[00:01:03] Welcome everyone to the exam man. If you haven't listened to us before then you have tuned into

[00:01:08] the world's leading podcast on examinations and assessment. There's not many of them.

[00:01:15] I mean it's true John but yeah there's not that many, there's not that many. We are a niche

[00:01:20] we are a niche but still, still the accolades ours. So this week we are going to be speaking to Amanda

[00:01:27] Spielman who is very well known in the world of education and she has held several very high

[00:01:34] profile roles but one of them that many people will not know about so well is that she was chair

[00:01:41] of Ofqual between 2011 and 2016 so we thought that she would be a fantastic person to speak to

[00:01:48] all about her experience, understanding of exams and assessment and also really good reflection

[00:01:55] on her time in that role. We were interested to speak to Amanda because she obviously has a deep

[00:02:01] knowledge about exams and assessment and in particular about the system as it exists currently.

[00:02:07] Obviously working in exams most of our time is taking up thinking about the day-to-day

[00:02:13] and the basic operational stuff because it's complicated and hard work as you know so.

[00:02:20] If you've ever mentioned that before. I don't like to talk about it but

[00:02:26] you know obviously doing it for a while you can't help but start to think about

[00:02:29] you know what the general purpose of what we're doing is and whether or not the system that

[00:02:34] we have works, whether it could be improved, how much it should be improved etc etc. So

[00:02:39] it's really interesting to have some of these conversations as well and another really fascinating

[00:02:45] thing about this interview I think is that a lot of people want to talk to Amanda Spillman

[00:02:50] about Ofsted and we deliberately wanted to focus on exams and not Ofsted but what was so

[00:02:56] interesting about this interview was that in the end it did lead us there but because of course

[00:03:02] Ofsted inspections are in themselves a form of assessment

[00:03:06] and it was through our conversations about assessment that we ended up talking about

[00:03:11] So yeah so we didn't go in there with a specific intention to grill Amanda Spillman about Ofsted

[00:03:18] but we did end up talking about it and I think what we discussed and it was really really interesting.

[00:03:23] Yeah it was really, we had a really long interview didn't we? With her it was really interesting.

[00:03:29] One thing I'm really pleased about this interview though is that it's not a video podcast,

[00:03:33] the exam man, because do you remember how hot it was? It was a few weeks ago and it was one of the

[00:03:39] hottest, I think it was the hottest day of the year. We were both red faced and I looked like a tomato.

[00:03:45] Extremely sweaty. So just you know just have that image in your head as you listen into this

[00:03:50] and be grateful that this is an audio at New Podcasts. We're aware that you've had a very

[00:04:02] interesting life and career so we'd love to hear about it and particularly about your

[00:04:06] experience of moving from finance into education and what appealed about that move?

[00:04:11] So my name's Amanda Spillman, people probably know me best in education because I was

[00:04:16] Austin Chief Inspector for seven years but before that I was also Chair of the Exam Regulator

[00:04:21] OFQOL for more than six years and before that I was part of the founding management team at

[00:04:27] one of the big academy chains, ARC Schools. So I've been in education for 23 years now

[00:04:34] and it's actually a much longer career in education than my previous career in finance.

[00:04:41] I've never regretted that switch I made in my late 30s to move into education.

[00:04:47] Fascinating as Austin was, what I learned at OFQOL about assessment, about its complexities,

[00:04:55] about the opportunities, about all the risks and downsides, I think for me it's an incredibly

[00:05:03] interesting and under discussed aspect of education and there's been a huge amount in the

[00:05:08] education world discussion over the last decade about pedagogy, quite a lot more recently about

[00:05:15] curriculum and I think I've been part of the reason for that but assessment remains

[00:05:19] under discussed and it's so important and that's why I'm really happy to be here talking about it

[00:05:25] today. You wrote recently an article for Schools Week which was about the upcoming

[00:05:31] curriculum and assessment review that's due to report in 2025. In it you sort of set out a number of

[00:05:37] kind of priorities for the assessment aspect of that review but I was interested with something

[00:05:43] you said towards the start were about your experience of the last kind of reforms that

[00:05:49] took place in assessment and you said that there were strengths and flaws in the last round of

[00:05:54] assessment reform so I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit for us,

[00:05:58] what were some of the strengths, what were some of the flaws of that reform that took place

[00:06:02] between 2011 and 2016? The new national curriculum had been put in place in what 2012

[00:06:09] with a lot of evidence underpinning it, a really serious attempt to sort of crystallise

[00:06:15] what children should know and be able to do at the end of secondary education and

[00:06:21] the exam reform programme was trying to translate that faithfully into the new GCSEs to create

[00:06:30] sort of coherence for children through secondary education. It was very much subject by subject,

[00:06:39] there was a subject content group deciding on each subject, there's a meet of each subject

[00:06:49] and then there was a process for designing the assessments after that and then the translation

[00:06:55] into the classroom through the curriculum, developing the curriculum resources,

[00:07:02] lesson planning, training teachers was all picked up after that so it was very much a

[00:07:08] sequential undertaking and therein lies I think one of the things that there's an

[00:07:13] opportunity to do differently because actually of course to make exam qualifications work well

[00:07:21] in the classroom you really need a lot of different kinds of expertise brought together

[00:07:26] from the beginning, you need the curriculum expertise, the people who really understand

[00:07:31] how to put together a curriculum that makes for a coherent education experience and the

[00:07:39] people who understand what you can and can't do with assessment and how far you can push it to

[00:07:44] achieve the different purposes and also what the trade-offs are going to be between the

[00:07:51] different assessment purposes and you need the people who are going to teach it to say hang on

[00:07:57] this isn't going to work, this piece is going to be overweight in practice,

[00:08:02] this bit is going to be really hard to motivate children through and of course writing resources

[00:08:09] is a time-consuming undertaking and can only be done by people who properly understand the

[00:08:15] curriculum and the pedagogy implications so it really does need a range of skills and there is

[00:08:23] almost nobody who has all of those within one subject let alone across the board

[00:08:30] so one of the really important takeaways for me at the completion of the program was that next

[00:08:37] time around it would be better to think about them in a more unified way so I guess announcing

[00:08:43] a curriculum and assessment review is a good first step but really make sure that that

[00:08:50] that is how it's thought about in practice joining them up not treating it as a curriculum

[00:08:55] piece and then an assessment piece and oh then pick it up and turn it into classroom programs

[00:09:00] yeah because I noticed in your article as well you talked a bit about how

[00:09:06] assessment can actually be used to generate good curriculum as well so that's maybe looking at it

[00:09:12] from the other end. People get quite fixated on the end outputs often and partly on the

[00:09:21] certification for people themselves partly on the results that it feeds into the accountability

[00:09:29] machine partly on the the ranking that it provides to help selective institutions decide who they're

[00:09:37] going to admit to which courses and people forget the extent to which the actual taught curriculum

[00:09:47] is defined by the content and foot and foot form of those assessments so you can have a national

[00:09:54] curriculum that says children are going to be taught a wide range of literary texts over key

[00:10:03] stage three and key stage four but if you then design an assessment that just tests pupils on

[00:10:10] one book and three poems whatever it may happen to be for many many children the experience they'll

[00:10:16] get will be being taught one but one book and three poems so you really have to think in a cold

[00:10:24] hard way not just about what the enthusiasts will do with this curriculum and assessment

[00:10:30] but you also have to think about what will the hard-pressed teachers with limited bandwidth with

[00:10:37] lots problems to handle from parents lots of behaviour difficulties lots of s e n d difficulties

[00:10:44] what is what is the the path of least resistance that teachers will be pressured to feel pressured

[00:10:51] to default to over time because that's what the enacted curriculum will become

[00:10:58] and assessment can well-designed assessment can protect that by sampling the domain

[00:11:05] widely enough by having sufficient unpredictability that there's real downside to skipping chunks

[00:11:15] that you think aren't aren't aren't going to be assessed and and so on so really thinking about

[00:11:22] the stuff that's uncomfortable because nobody wants to think that people that people will

[00:11:28] take shortcuts but under pressure and when people have got a lot on their plate from a lot of

[00:11:33] directions of course it's rational to simplify and i'm not criticising people for doing this at all

[00:11:41] i'm saying that it's it's inevitable if an assessment is poorly designed yeah to create those

[00:11:48] incentives they will act so it's it's really important to think about assessment as curriculum

[00:11:55] protection curriculum definition and protection as well as something that provides some results

[00:12:01] and grades at the far end talking into sort of types of assessment as well obviously that

[00:12:07] what the previous review did two of the things it did was to sorry the previous reforms did

[00:12:12] was to reduce the amount of coursework in academic qualifications and also to move from

[00:12:21] modular assessment to terminal assessment in gtsc's and a levels are those are those trade

[00:12:26] offs or are they are they worthwhile things in themselves it is when it is put under pressure at

[00:12:33] the far end by being used for something high stakes whether it's high stakes for a school or high

[00:12:40] stakes for a pupil it may be that that puts more pressure on it than it than it can bear

[00:12:47] and that's compounded i think for many kinds of coursework in a world with artificial

[00:12:52] intelligence we know from the surveys that people people are doing of university students for

[00:12:58] example that an extraordinary number of students are already using ai to do or to help them do pieces

[00:13:05] of university coursework which count towards degree degrees and at one level people say well

[00:13:11] they're going to be using it in the adult world so why does it matter but it does matter because

[00:13:17] learning is a cumulative process if you bypass the the intellectual effort of synthesizing

[00:13:29] and drawing out and applying what you're meant to be studying then you're not actually going

[00:13:35] to learn it so you're going to come out with no more knowledge than you had at the outset

[00:13:40] and people often point at other systems and say well x country has coursework in its equivalent

[00:13:51] of a levels but then you look across at their higher education systems and you will see for

[00:13:58] example that they've got a system where everybody who achieves a basic diploma

[00:14:04] is eligible to sign up for the university course of their choice and the real weeding out happens

[00:14:11] at the end of the first year of university when if people fail exams they're out typically you

[00:14:16] find that they've got some kind of highly demanding selection test for the things that

[00:14:22] are always oversubscribed like medicine law whatever but many many countries have a non-selective

[00:14:29] first level admission into university so there isn't the same pressure but as things stand

[00:14:37] with all the pressure of accountability on schools and all the incentives that the AI

[00:14:44] offers to pupils I think protecting curriculum and teaching and making sure that

[00:14:52] the grades that come out the far end truly reflect real education achievement is is an

[00:14:58] impossible challenge it's one of those things that that looks and feels lovely and yet it's too hard

[00:15:06] in practice I had somebody who was one of the architects of course English coursework

[00:15:14] in GCSEs in his days at national strategies who was a chair of governors and he said I was

[00:15:20] part of the pilot it worked brilliantly pupils produce great work it was really motivating

[00:15:25] and I said I think if go to the school where your chair of governors sit down with the head

[00:15:30] of English and really unpack how the coursework is being done especially for the lower sets

[00:15:38] and how much of how much of class time through key stage four is going on doing and redoing

[00:15:45] that coursework and he came back to me a few weeks later and he'd done exactly that

[00:15:51] and he said you were right and I couldn't believe what had happened we had we thought we had such

[00:15:59] a great model yeah and it turned into something completely different that that wasn't valuable

[00:16:05] for most children and there's an extra little wrinkle there which was the harm the children

[00:16:11] whose curriculum whose teaching whose experience got most distorted by coursework tended to be those

[00:16:18] ends of lower sets so it was less visible to the kinds of politicians journalists whoever whose

[00:16:26] children tended to be in the top sets who who did the cook the coursework once or at worst

[00:16:31] twice who so who didn't experience that stripping out of so much of the education

[00:16:38] that's really interesting Amanda because I think the argument I hear most against coursework is

[00:16:43] the argument at the top end which is that students who come from family backgrounds

[00:16:50] where the parents are what you know highly educated kind of middle-class backgrounds are

[00:16:56] that there's a kind of gaming of coursework that can go on in that respect but actually to

[00:17:01] hear the argument that argument that you've laid out there is actually more is kind of a

[00:17:06] more interesting argument actually and controlled assessment was an incredible burden on schools

[00:17:12] and yeah I actually think it came about through a slight misdiagnosis the assumption was that

[00:17:19] the problem was advantage children getting too much at help at home with coursework but

[00:17:25] the reality was that in many many schools the curriculum had been completely reshaped towards

[00:17:33] making sure that every child got the intended number of marks in the coursework to get the target

[00:17:41] grade so and controlled assessment did did did nothing to defuse that yeah yeah sure and I

[00:17:50] I know many many teachers absolutely cheered when coursework was removed because yeah summer well

[00:17:57] yeah I can see your face Sophie said for so many teachers it had become an incredible burden

[00:18:05] and I think that's one of the dangers now because it was taken out

[00:18:08] nine years ago now I think we've got a lot of young teachers who don't really have any sense

[00:18:16] of quite how it could how it distorted education and quite how it was used to put incredible pressure

[00:18:24] on teachers to get the required number of marks on every on every piece of coursework

[00:18:32] was it Amanda was it a similar thinking when talking about modular exams as well that

[00:18:37] what would happen is because they were happening regularly that there'd be an over focus on

[00:18:44] that rather than the broad curriculum yes and when almost every two when whenever almost every term

[00:18:50] for about three years becomes an exam term and you've got the curriculum disruption you've got

[00:18:58] time switched away from teaching a coherent and accumulative curriculum to direct preparation

[00:19:05] for that particular module and what's likely to be tested in that that that's quite disruptive

[00:19:12] to the flow of secondary education and also what we now know is that you don't just

[00:19:22] learn something get taught something learn it remember it and boom move on to the next thing

[00:19:27] actually we're constantly laying down and the everything that we now know about retrieval

[00:19:34] practice about partial forgetting and retrieval and consolidation that takes a sustained sort of

[00:19:40] cumulative first learning and practice of the initial thing and then drawing on that knowledge

[00:19:46] again you keep reusing things and that's how you consolidate your learning and modularization

[00:19:54] in cuts right across that because it disrupts what we know what we know now from cognitive

[00:20:02] science is how we learn and consolidate what we know so that we can really draw on it through

[00:20:08] throughout our life because it encouraged learn a topic for a term answer the questions dump it out

[00:20:16] of your memory and get on to the next thing so by the end of two years if you've done done something

[00:20:22] in modules in four or so four different four different modules and most of the many months

[00:20:27] ago never gone back to it you will simply know a lot less than the person who's done

[00:20:33] the sort of synoptic course and done internal practice tests in the different elements along

[00:20:38] the way but is always expecting but firstly has been taught in a way that draws on the different

[00:20:45] components and the accumulation of the components as they go through and is it and where everybody

[00:20:50] is expecting the people to be assessed on the totality of the curriculum at the end not

[00:20:55] just the most recent slice it makes for a different learning experience and I think the whole idea

[00:21:02] came about almost by default as I've heard the story it came about really drawing on the idea of

[00:21:10] college credit in the US that if you can chop things up for college credit then wouldn't it be great

[00:21:18] to make it possible for everybody to move institutions move courses just grab a module and

[00:21:25] move on right but it was like the cart before the horse it it it threw it throughout the education

[00:21:32] baby in pursuit of a secondary idea a secondary purpose do you think Amanda that that sort of

[00:21:41] modular system weirdly as well because you know there's always the sort of argument between

[00:21:45] sort of knowledge and skills right um do you think that that modularization actually

[00:21:50] strangely prioritizes knowledge over skills in that it it it forces you if you don't have ongoing

[00:21:57] modular assessment you have the opportunity to develop the skills across a long period of time

[00:22:03] that then kind of goes with the knowledge that's absolutely right yeah yeah sorry I didn't mean

[00:22:10] to interrupt totally totally agree if you chop things things up into into little modules and

[00:22:19] a gcs a single gcse module was really quite a small number of taught hours and you have to do your

[00:22:26] skill development only within what's been taught in that module that's a much much more limited

[00:22:33] base for developing anything so you're absolutely you're absolutely right you can do much more

[00:22:39] coherent skill development off the back of the the knowledge content of a broader curriculum which

[00:22:46] which also just makes the experience more interesting it gives teachers much more scope to

[00:22:52] to design genuinely interesting tasks that that that that gives students the the chance to do

[00:22:59] things that they're likely to find interesting in themselves as well as educationally valuable

[00:23:12] you're talking your article um Amanda about the different purposes of different assessments

[00:23:18] could you explain a little bit about that in particular about um assessments that are

[00:23:24] used for accountability versus those that are used for pupil certification let's take a gcse for

[00:23:30] example it's a wide range assessment it's designed partly to say in due course to employers

[00:23:40] what somebody knows and can do but the more immediate use for most pupils is to signal

[00:23:48] to fe colleges to six forms for other courses where in that in the distribution they sit

[00:23:55] whether they're likely to be able to cope with a particular level and subject of course and

[00:24:01] particular course course content from age 16 are they going to be doing broadly an a level

[00:24:08] course a t level course and applied another sort of applied general based level three course

[00:24:15] a level two course or down an entry or level one broadly there's a gcse a gcse grade average that

[00:24:23] pretty much corresponds with each of those thresholds um and that's a really important

[00:24:30] important function for that to work gcse's have got to give a reasonably reliable indication

[00:24:41] across quite a wide grade range at the very top end um there are people who are clearly

[00:24:49] going to be able to cope with a levels with it probably don't need a huge amount of precision

[00:24:53] between a's and a stars on that at the other end there are people who are clearly going to be

[00:25:00] heading into an entry or level one course but in between it is important if you're going to be if

[00:25:07] course space is a rationed it is it is only fair to make sure that you've got

[00:25:13] over something that is reasonably good at doing that sorting um to take another kind of test

[00:25:21] um let's let's say a selection test for a grammar school to take an unfashionable topic but

[00:25:30] an important one to understand unlike a gcse you don't need to construct a test that is valid and

[00:25:38] reliable across the entire range if your test aims to to select about the top 25 percent

[00:25:48] of achievers on your test then you're not very worried about discriminating among the top 15

[00:25:55] percent of the population and you're not very worried about differentiating among the bottom

[00:26:01] two-thirds because you know that the bottom two-thirds are not in scope and the top 15

[00:26:07] percent are deaf so really you're looking to assess reliably across about 15 percent of the

[00:26:16] range sort of five to ten percent either either side so that you make good good decisions at the

[00:26:24] margin so you don't put in really easy and really really hard test items that won't help you differentiate

[00:26:32] in that range because they would just take up time it's you make children spend spend more time

[00:26:37] sitting either doing questions that were really easy for them or struggling with questions

[00:26:42] that are really hard for you that wouldn't give you better information about who to admit and and

[00:26:50] who not to so so technically you design something completely different another kind of test is

[00:26:59] a competence test which is much more common in vocational education or something like a driving

[00:27:06] test where to give and particularly relevant to any any sort of vocational assessment where you're

[00:27:14] giving people the power to kill people or to harm people as for example if you're certifying people

[00:27:20] as electricians yeah the kinds of assessment you design for those are not designed to assess people

[00:27:29] across a wide range and saying this is a d-grade electrician and this is a b-grade

[00:27:34] electrician and this is an a-star electrician they are designed to is this person competent to go out

[00:27:41] or not and not electrical stuff or not yeah so you have so you have so whereas your GCSE can

[00:27:50] simply sample across the domain your test for an electrician has to basically test them on every

[00:27:58] skill and make sure that their sound on every skill and allow only a small margin for things that

[00:28:07] can go wrong on the day because otherwise you will accidentally sign people off as competent to

[00:28:15] do electric electrical things that can be dangerous if they're done wrongly so the way

[00:28:22] you decide what to test from the whole syllabus or specification the kinds of questions that you set

[00:28:31] and how much they range from easy to hard and how much that is or or focus on a certain point in

[00:28:37] the middle and what kind of and whether you set a pass mark or threshold or not and all of those

[00:28:45] are completely driven by the purpose you're assessing for and accountability tests are different

[00:28:52] again and a lot of people don't understand one of the most important they're different because

[00:29:00] you're not trying to get a reliable fix on every single pupil a GCSE you're talking about fairness

[00:29:10] to the individual if you are running something as an accountability test on a secondary school that's

[00:29:16] got a year group of 200 you've got the benefit of averaging to get a decent fix on the the

[00:29:23] average achievement of children in that school you can have quite a pretty um a much do a much

[00:29:32] more limited test in terms of the precision with which it measures the charge because you

[00:29:37] know at the end of the day you're dividing that by 200 it's like weighing it's like getting the average

[00:29:42] weight of a jar of beans you don't need to weigh each bean individually you can weigh the weight

[00:29:49] weigh the jar of 200 beans and and divide by 200 to get the average average weight of a bean

[00:29:55] a test that is just for accountability and key stage two tests are an example of a test that

[00:30:01] is actually designed for getting reliability at the level of sorry we're smiling just to

[00:30:06] interrupt you about we're smiling because that was one of our questions earlier okay so here's

[00:30:12] a question for you Amanda do you think that the purpose of key stage two's test is well understood

[00:30:17] I don't think the the purpose of key stage two tests is well understood um and the original

[00:30:24] purpose is very clearly about assessing schools but they've come to be seen as something that is

[00:30:32] sort of definitive of children's achievement and particularly using them as

[00:30:40] starter grades for secondary schools to set target grades for the end for the end of

[00:30:45] of key stage four I think is is really concerning because they're simply not that precise

[00:30:52] and it's possible both to put to put too low an expectation as or too high an expectation

[00:30:59] if you don't properly understand that there can easily be quite a significant element of

[00:31:05] overall under measurement which isn't the key stage two test getting it wrong because it's not

[00:31:11] what it's designed to do um it's designed to be reliable when it's divided by the number of

[00:31:16] children in the school to get to the average achievement of children children in that school

[00:31:22] so I do worry and one of the things that happens as soon as you create an assessment

[00:31:28] even if it's defined and clearly stated to be defined for one purpose people will start using

[00:31:36] it for others yeah I mean one of the things I often see with key stage two tests I think is that

[00:31:42] a confusion about whether or not it's a measure or a target so um you know that old kind of I

[00:31:49] don't know it is a law isn't it that says that once a measure becomes a target it ceases to

[00:31:55] be a good measure yeah do you think is that something you've been aware of with key stage two

[00:32:02] tests well with all tests I mean it's it's a it's a difficulty with with any kind of

[00:32:10] accountability measure um it's it was a difficulty with five plus it's a difficulty with with

[00:32:17] with progress eight over time measures always sort of wear themselves out no matter how good they are

[00:32:25] they wear themselves out the more a system of orients orients itself towards delivering

[00:32:31] on that measure um and that was part of why I redesigned inspection and to look at what sits

[00:32:39] underneath results to help counterbalance that that tendency to over focus on the current measure

[00:32:47] whatever it may happen to be to make sure that good results are being achieved through genuinely

[00:32:54] good at good education how do you feel on that in terms of um in relation to inspections about the

[00:33:07] removal of one word grades there's a big government agenda of transparency and accountability

[00:33:14] and care homes gps hospitals prisons police forces as well as schools are all inspected

[00:33:22] are all reported on public and essentially the same set of grades is used for all of them

[00:33:27] so I don't think it is really about precise wording of grades I think it's about the

[00:33:32] significance that they have which of course um is determined by the consequences that central

[00:33:39] government local government employers people's managers hang hang on them there are some

[00:33:46] really difficult conversations that as a nation we've been very very reluctant to have here

[00:33:51] about how do you balance the interests of children the person using the service often vulnerable person

[00:33:58] and the adults who work in it there's there's no easy answers here and I wouldn't want to pretend

[00:34:04] that there are I watched you an interview that you did with Nick Ferrari on LBC uh in preparation

[00:34:10] for this interview and I was really impressed he was pushing you on the the change to the

[00:34:15] nine to one grading I don't know whether you remember this it was a while ago I do remember

[00:34:19] that because he I can't remember why he tied me in knots on trying to explain

[00:34:24] that basically three of the two of the old grades were turning into three of the new ones or vice

[00:34:29] first yeah he was trying to get you to do the he was out he was out to tie me in knots so it was

[00:34:34] yeah yeah yeah definitely was he was trying to get you to do the conversions wasn't he from

[00:34:39] the old greats the new greats which is just um but I actually thought you explained it very well

[00:34:43] in the sense that you said what we needed to do was to to discriminate better so we need

[00:34:48] to expand the range of grades I wondered whether in relation to to Ofsted and the grading that schools

[00:34:56] were receiving whether or not that was you thought that was an issue that that maybe there wasn't

[00:35:02] a broad enough range um to discriminate effectively and that there've been times when

[00:35:09] there've been more grades in assessment to discriminate more you have to have you to put

[00:35:18] more into the assessment process if you judge more things or try to discriminate more on a scale

[00:35:24] you have to do more assessment and the trend of the last 20 years in government has been to take

[00:35:30] resource out of inspection so it's it's taken it's taken out three quarters of the resource for

[00:35:37] inspection yeah in that time the whole all of secondary inspection up to and including the

[00:35:44] slice of the chief inspector for 4000 secondary schools is now done with the budget of one

[00:35:49] secondary school right yeah so it's it's an interesting intellectual exercise but unless

[00:35:56] government changes policy to allow a sort of more expansive inspection process you simply

[00:36:02] couldn't add in more discrimination yeah without sacrificing reliability yeah and I guess it's a

[00:36:09] trade-off as well then isn't it because then you would place more inspection burden on schools

[00:36:13] as well wouldn't you because you'd need to be there for longer you'd need to visit more often

[00:36:17] you know all those sorts of things there's some really difficult choices around the lowest

[00:36:32] achievers on the one hand there is a laudable desire to make sure that aspiration isn't capped

[00:36:41] for anybody and that children children have the opportunity to progress as far as they as

[00:36:49] they're capable but on the other hand it's often hard for a child who has little realistic

[00:36:56] possibility of getting further than the lowest grades in a GCSE course for example

[00:37:04] either to find that a rewarding course of study in itself or to come out of it with a grade

[00:37:13] that indicates anything to employers about what they know or can do because it's assembled

[00:37:20] from a few marks picked up here and there not from a clear indication that they can cope with

[00:37:26] quite a lot of basic math say and also it's not going to get them above the most basic level

[00:37:35] of courses in fe college so there's there is a bit of a moral philosophical question about

[00:37:43] what is right and we've gone to and fro in national terms in having separate curriculum

[00:37:52] and qualification for lower achievers and wanting to have a unified system in which everybody has

[00:37:58] the chance to progress all the way there isn't a perfect a perfect answer but I do think there's

[00:38:07] an argument at the very least from being more explicit for the beginning about having

[00:38:16] um some some curriculum and and qualifications that give lower achievers the chance at age 16

[00:38:23] not just as a an add-on that they take some time in college after they've got a poor grade at GCSE

[00:38:31] the chance to earn a decent grade in a qualification that's that covers a more limited

[00:38:39] domain but lets them show that they've achieved a level of mastery over that more limited domain

[00:38:46] there's an example that people draw on sometimes that goes goes a long way back

[00:38:52] back in the day the Royal Society of Arts interestingly had a whole suite of qualifications

[00:38:58] that were mainly used for people going into clerical occupations they were in

[00:39:03] a lot of arithmetic shorthand typing the kinds of things that that people going into clerical

[00:39:12] occupations would would find valuable to have certified and RSA arithmetic was a well-designed

[00:39:20] course and it was often used for teaching sets who were not considered likely to get

[00:39:29] a decent grade at O level but who could nevertheless in the more limited domain of arithmetic

[00:39:37] show good achievement and that that qualification had really high labour market value

[00:39:43] it was absolutely the thing you would want on your CV that would help you get a job

[00:39:49] so there have been times when we've not been so focused on single level qualifications

[00:39:54] but to be more comfortable with multiple levels and if that's what's valuable

[00:40:01] to the students themselves I think it's important that we try and think about how to make how to

[00:40:08] find ways to make sure that's the the first thing they do rather than something they do after

[00:40:13] they've failed yeah yeah or have gone through that through that through the misery of feeling

[00:40:20] that they've they've failed at GCSE yeah keeping people motivated keeping people feel that there's

[00:40:26] an opportunity to to get to make to really achieve the right curriculum and get recognition for that

[00:40:34] there's been very little evaluation have you ever come across the teacher tap blog

[00:40:46] yes yes yes I've looked at this and it was really striking how successful actually

[00:40:54] the current set of GCSEs have been on the whether they were better preparation for A levels

[00:41:02] I think languages were 12 to 1 saying that the new GCSEs were better preparation than the old ones

[00:41:09] and English was the grumpiest subject it was only just it was just under 2 to 1

[00:41:15] in favour of the new ones and very similar results for did they like teaching them better

[00:41:23] arm or teachers like teaching the new ones better than the old one the range from the happiest to

[00:41:29] the least happy possibly links to where that the difference between thinking about what's going

[00:41:38] to be what's going to make a good classroom experience sits at all sits most at odds with

[00:41:45] what's going to give us valid and reliable assessments and I when I look at English language

[00:41:50] and English language GCSE paper I can see on the one hand I can see why the assessment design works

[00:41:58] as it does but I can also see why it's not always going to translate into something that's actually

[00:42:05] interesting and enjoyable yeah class so that links back round to the point I made at the

[00:42:10] beginning of join up curriculum pedagogy assessment from the very beginning if you want to make

[00:42:18] something that people can genuinely see and will acknowledge is making education better so Amanda

[00:42:24] is that your that's your one big wish for this curriculum assessment review would you say of

[00:42:29] everything that you'd like to see out of it would be that that broad approach I'm going to have

[00:42:34] if I'm good if I'm allowed wishes I'm going to have two yeah one is the join up and the

[00:42:41] other is don't throw babies out with the bathwater yeah that even that limited bit of evaluation

[00:42:47] from teacher tap shows that in the main the current set of GCSEs were a huge advance

[00:42:54] on their predecessors and teachers have got their head around them as they've got the head around

[00:42:59] the national curriculum don't create a lot of upheaval in places where it's not needed intelligent

[00:43:07] iteration of the things that need iterating should be the name of the game Amanda thank you so much

[00:43:13] for giving us your time we really really appreciate it and so much time than we you know said because

[00:43:18] we thought yeah I really appreciate it an hour and a half talking about assessment is my idea

[00:43:25] of heaven well I'll ask you which you can tell so this is amazing it's been a real pleasure to

[00:43:31] talk to you both thank you so much for listening to the exam man podcast we really really appreciate

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