Obsessed with Assessment

[00:00:14] Okay, so this week we've done something a little bit different and we've had our first collaborative podcast episode where we've joined forces with another powerhouse in the world of assessment, Sam Denno.

[00:00:28] And he runs the Obsessed with Assessment podcast, which is a really, really lovely podcast I really recommend you listening to, where he distills insights from reports, blogs, videos and all sorts of advice and guidance.

[00:00:44] Into really quite impressive CPD sessions for teachers.

[00:00:48] So some would say that it's probably significantly more useful for people than The Exam Man podcast.

[00:00:54] But yeah, we just recommend that you listen to both of them and enjoy.

[00:01:10] If you are familiar with the format of the show, then you'll know that we zoom in on one particular theme relating to assessment.

[00:01:18] We chew it over for 10 minutes and then offer a handful of key takeaways for possible implementation in your practice.

[00:01:27] It's no different here, but instead of an interrogation on a theme, it's going to be an interrogation of John and Sophie.

[00:01:34] And we're going for a big topic and that is the English exam system.

[00:01:40] John, can you tell me what it means to be an exam officer?

[00:01:45] What it means?

[00:01:48] Well, the first thing it means is that you're tired quite a lot of the time.

[00:01:53] Particularly in the summer.

[00:01:54] Particularly in the summer months, yeah.

[00:01:57] But it's very important.

[00:01:58] Exams officers get very annoyed if you only talk about the summer exams, as if there aren't other exams that take place throughout the year.

[00:02:05] So your job really as the exams officer is just to organise all the exams that take place in a school.

[00:02:11] So that includes obviously all the public exams, but mock exams as well.

[00:02:16] And obviously it differs across schools.

[00:02:19] So, you know, we have a small sixth form.

[00:02:22] Other schools might have very large sixth forms, doing a whole range of different kinds of courses.

[00:02:27] And obviously then all the qualifications that you've got at year 11 and running exams for younger years as well.

[00:02:33] So it's quite, it's a full on job throughout the year.

[00:02:39] And yeah, it has its obvious, obvious pinch points.

[00:02:42] But basically what you're trying to do is to make that experience as good as it can be for students.

[00:02:51] So obviously it's a stressful time, particularly the high stakes exams are stressful.

[00:02:56] So you're trying to organise it well so that, you know, it's a smooth process for them.

[00:03:01] And also, you know, to help them to get the most out of that experience.

[00:03:08] Great.

[00:03:08] Do you have interactions with the students themselves?

[00:03:13] Yeah, I mean, you tend to, our podcast is called The Exam Man.

[00:03:18] And the sort of joke behind that is that nobody, none of the students know who you are until kind of year 11.

[00:03:27] And then they really, really know who you are.

[00:03:29] Like you're like a kind of malevolent presence in their life throughout the year.

[00:03:36] But they, yeah, so you do have interactions with students.

[00:03:42] But principally in those exam years, so in year 11, year 13.

[00:03:48] They will often come to you with questions about exams and how they work.

[00:03:52] And, you know, if they've got any worries or concerns.

[00:03:55] You'll speak to their parents often as well along the same lines.

[00:04:00] And, you know, I've done things like I do assemblies, go and talk to tutor groups and things like that to try and explain the process to them.

[00:04:08] Because I think one of the things that sometimes gets overlooked is that obviously you're very focused on the content of what we're assessing.

[00:04:15] But the process itself is something that can have its own barriers and its own issues.

[00:04:21] And so helping them to kind of navigate that as well is also like quite an important thing to do.

[00:04:28] So, yeah, we try and get out there as much as possible and interact with the students, definitely.

[00:04:34] Yeah.

[00:04:34] You still have to do duties.

[00:04:36] I have to do duties.

[00:04:37] Toyo duties.

[00:04:38] Yeah, yeah.

[00:04:39] Great duties.

[00:04:40] Are you also a classroom teacher?

[00:04:42] No, I'm not.

[00:04:43] No, so I did.

[00:04:44] So for a while, as I said, our school had a small sixth form.

[00:04:48] So I did actually teach A-level for a few years.

[00:04:53] I'm not doing that anymore because our sixth form is actually massively reduced and is closing.

[00:04:58] OK.

[00:04:58] But I did do that.

[00:04:59] So I had some view of it from that side as well.

[00:05:02] But I have to say, actually, teaching and being an exams officer, there are people who do it and do it very effectively.

[00:05:07] But it's hard.

[00:05:09] It's really difficult.

[00:05:10] A lot of exams officers have another role, don't they?

[00:05:12] So you're a data manager?

[00:05:14] Yeah, so I have a very exciting role.

[00:05:16] I'm a data manager as well.

[00:05:17] OK, wow.

[00:05:19] So I do those two jobs.

[00:05:21] It's changed a lot, actually.

[00:05:22] When I started in 2011, there were a lot more exams because students did modular exams back then.

[00:05:29] And I was actually, I was in a team of two.

[00:05:33] So I started as the exams officer and I also had an exams assistant.

[00:05:36] Plus there was a separate data manager in the school as well.

[00:05:39] And now I do all three of those jobs effectively.

[00:05:43] Exactly.

[00:05:44] But the role of the exam, I don't know whether exams officers will thank me for saying this,

[00:05:49] but the role has slightly reduced in some respects since 2015-16.

[00:05:57] Interesting.

[00:05:57] So there are fewer high stakes exams.

[00:06:01] Doesn't mean there are fewer exams because they often get replaced with mocks and things like that.

[00:06:05] But there are fewer high stakes exams now than there were back then because you don't have as many exams in November and January as you used to.

[00:06:14] Now, this might come across as a really naive question.

[00:06:17] It probably is.

[00:06:19] Does every school have an exam officer?

[00:06:21] Yes.

[00:06:22] So you have to.

[00:06:24] You have to.

[00:06:25] If you're running exams, you have to have a designated exams officer.

[00:06:29] But that person, it sort of varies from school to school.

[00:06:32] So like in some places you'll find that that person might be a member of SLT.

[00:06:39] So that was quite an old school model, I think.

[00:06:44] If you went back to maybe 20 years ago, then I think you'd find a lot of the time that exams officers were members of SLT who had been given that responsibility.

[00:06:56] But I think as the role grew and it became more demanding, it sort of moved out of that role.

[00:07:03] And then they had a specialist person in schools to do it.

[00:07:06] But you do have to have a person in your school who is designated as an exams officer.

[00:07:11] And that is the person who the exam boards will interact with principally.

[00:07:16] So you also have a head of centre who is your.

[00:07:19] Usually the head teacher, isn't it?

[00:07:20] Usually your head teacher.

[00:07:22] But they sort of do it.

[00:07:24] We described, it got described by someone on our podcast, the head of centre as like a monarch, like a ceremonial monarch.

[00:07:31] So they like, they don't have any actual authority.

[00:07:36] The exams officer, actually the exams officer does all the stuff.

[00:07:40] And the head of centre is there to sort of just wave and sign things off.

[00:07:44] OK.

[00:07:45] So, yeah.

[00:07:46] Unless something goes really wrong and then they really have to step in, I guess.

[00:07:49] And it's less ceremonial.

[00:07:51] But hopefully that ever happens.

[00:07:52] But they'll generally just blame you for it anyway.

[00:07:56] Yeah.

[00:07:57] So I suppose what's mad is, so I've worked in a number of schools.

[00:08:00] I would not have known who the exam officer was in those schools.

[00:08:04] Is that typical?

[00:08:06] Soph said that on a podcast as well.

[00:08:09] Which is nice because had I been working in the same school as her, she would have noticed who I was.

[00:08:13] So.

[00:08:17] What led you to this, John?

[00:08:21] Well, it wasn't.

[00:08:22] It wasn't planned.

[00:08:23] It wasn't planned.

[00:08:24] It wasn't intentional at all.

[00:08:27] Which, again, is another theme that comes up.

[00:08:29] Like no one sets out to become an exams officer.

[00:08:32] I really want to talk to someone who does.

[00:08:34] Because I really want to find someone who, when they had their careers chat at 16 in school,

[00:08:40] I've heard of the single exam officer.

[00:08:42] I really want to do that job in school.

[00:08:44] I've seen this person running around the school really stressed out and I'd like to do that job.

[00:08:48] If anyone has listened to us who wants to come on and talk to us about always wanting to be an exam officer.

[00:08:53] But it's not.

[00:08:54] It's really.

[00:08:55] Most people have fallen in.

[00:08:56] Yeah.

[00:08:56] In a quite interesting way.

[00:08:58] Definitely.

[00:08:58] So I, so Sophie was a teacher.

[00:09:03] We were living in London and you got a job, didn't you?

[00:09:06] Brighton.

[00:09:07] A job in Brighton, a school in Brighton that you really, really wanted to do.

[00:09:11] And you started, so Sophie started commuting down to Brighton from London every day.

[00:09:16] But obviously in schools, you often have to get there like really, really early.

[00:09:20] And it just wasn't, it wasn't plausible, was it?

[00:09:23] So we moved to Brighton and I was at the time working London, I was working in government.

[00:09:29] I was working at London Bridge.

[00:09:31] And so I was doing the commute from Brighton to London every day, which is not a particularly long train journey,

[00:09:38] but it is a particularly.

[00:09:40] Fraught.

[00:09:41] Terrible.

[00:09:43] Train line.

[00:09:45] It's a station where it just like every day, it seemed like I was getting stuck at Haywards Heath station.

[00:09:50] Nice.

[00:09:51] For like, often a couple of hours.

[00:09:54] No, it's a station.

[00:09:54] It's just full of people who are trying to get to Brighton or London.

[00:09:58] And congregating at seven o'clock at night.

[00:10:00] Yeah.

[00:10:00] So yeah.

[00:10:01] So I'd be like leaving the house before six, getting home after eight.

[00:10:04] And I was just like, I can't.

[00:10:06] This is just rubbish.

[00:10:07] I'm not going to continue.

[00:10:08] But we enjoyed living in Brighton, didn't we?

[00:10:10] So, so I just started looking for jobs locally.

[00:10:13] And it wasn't that easy to find a job.

[00:10:18] So, and in the end, I sort of hit upon this one at this school.

[00:10:22] We're looking for an exams officer.

[00:10:23] And I thought, well, I've worked in a school as a TA before.

[00:10:25] So I was like, well, okay, I'll, I know the environment.

[00:10:29] So I'll go, but I don't know anything about the job.

[00:10:31] And I think they just had a real dearth of people applying for this job.

[00:10:35] Because I didn't know what I was talking about at all.

[00:10:38] But they offered me the job.

[00:10:40] And then 13 years later, I'm still doing it.

[00:10:42] So, yeah.

[00:10:44] Okay.

[00:10:44] So that's interesting.

[00:10:45] So even though you taught A-level at that school, you're not a qualified teacher.

[00:10:49] I'm not a qualified teacher.

[00:10:50] No.

[00:10:50] They were looking for someone.

[00:10:51] Basically, like they didn't have someone to teach a subject, which I had a degree in.

[00:10:57] So they asked me if I would do it.

[00:10:59] And I did.

[00:10:59] And for a while, I really enjoyed it.

[00:11:01] But it was a lot.

[00:11:02] It was, it was hard work.

[00:11:04] It's stressful.

[00:11:04] And it creates all sorts of conflicts of interest that you have to deal with as well, obviously.

[00:11:08] Okay.

[00:11:09] If you're running the exams, but you're also teaching an exam subject.

[00:11:13] Yeah.

[00:11:13] And it makes life very, very complicated too.

[00:11:16] So, yeah.

[00:11:18] Yeah.

[00:11:19] Interesting.

[00:11:19] Well, can I, can I get your thoughts on this then?

[00:11:22] And perhaps then as a, as, as sort of the teaching specialist, Sophie, you might be able

[00:11:27] to chip on this as well.

[00:11:29] But do you think that high stakes exams are effective?

[00:11:32] They give you your, your, you're not going to say no because they give you your income.

[00:11:40] But are they, are they effective?

[00:11:42] Are they effective?

[00:11:43] I mean, it depends.

[00:11:44] I, I'm, my answer to this is going to be quite boring, I'm afraid, Sam.

[00:11:48] I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve.

[00:11:50] So like with any assessment, I think it's all about what the purpose of that assessment

[00:11:54] is and then trying to work out what is the best way to kind of achieve that purpose.

[00:11:58] I think that, you know, and obviously like with any of these things, like there are considerable

[00:12:03] sort of like trade-offs as well.

[00:12:05] So one of the things I think about like GCSE exams, for example, is that they really act

[00:12:11] as like a sifting tool now because most people don't leave school.

[00:12:15] Well, no one should be leaving school at 16.

[00:12:17] You know, you're continuing into some kind of educational training until 18.

[00:12:21] They're basically like a sifting tool, which gets you to the next stage of where you need

[00:12:25] to be.

[00:12:26] So there, I think there is a strong argument that because that's what they're doing, that

[00:12:30] they are a bit too high stakes.

[00:12:32] You know, there's too much of like this.

[00:12:34] This just feels like too much pressure for something which is just basically sifting you

[00:12:38] onto the next stage.

[00:12:40] But on the other hand, I think creating high stakes is at times important too.

[00:12:45] So it's like, you know, if you really want to understand what people can do and you really

[00:12:53] want to push people to achieve their best, then creating high stakes around something is one

[00:13:00] way to achieve that.

[00:13:03] So I'm not against like high stakes exams per se, but I do think that maybe they're kind

[00:13:09] of overused at times and not necessarily used.

[00:13:13] So like for GCSEs, I think it's a good example of where they might be kind of slightly overused.

[00:13:21] That's basically my very fudged answer to that question.

[00:13:27] What do you think, Sophie?

[00:13:29] Yeah, no, I think, I also think the kind of debate about exams, high stakes and exams and

[00:13:35] their effectiveness and purpose comes down to over the years, there's been lots of attempts

[00:13:40] to do different things and to assess children differently. And it just kind of keeps coming back

[00:13:48] to exams for a reason. And I think it is the kind of best, best case that we have for assessing

[00:13:54] children at the moment. And I think also it's about the kind of wider purpose of going to school.

[00:14:02] It's not just about what you learn in lessons, but also what does sitting high stakes exams give you

[00:14:08] overall as a child at school. And I think that's often not as often discussed, but really important

[00:14:15] as well about teaching resilience, you know, high pressure situations, getting used to that before

[00:14:21] you enter the workplace. I think there's other benefits to it, which probably factors into why they

[00:14:27] endure as well.

[00:14:28] If I may play devil's advocate for a moment then. John, one thing you said is creating high stakes

[00:14:37] high stakes can be important. You did say can be important. If we look at the education systems

[00:14:48] in, I've been looking at three Nordic countries recently, Denmark, Finland, Norway, in which there

[00:14:58] are very, very few high stakes exams. And these are sort of held up as kind of being the most,

[00:15:04] being the most kind of prestigious education, among the most prestigious education systems

[00:15:09] in the world. They don't think that creating high stakes is important.

[00:15:16] You probably don't have a comeback for that.

[00:15:19] Well, no, I mean, I do. I mean, I think that, you know, I think in what I was basically saying

[00:15:25] is that in some circumstances, creating high stakes is important. So for example, I would want

[00:15:30] any doctor that I was treated by to have sat some high stakes assessments. Like, do you

[00:15:35] know what I mean? So if it's important, if the purpose for what you're assessing people

[00:15:40] is really important, then I think it's important that they are assessed in a fairly high stakes

[00:15:47] way. Because otherwise, I don't think that you can guarantee that what you're getting out

[00:15:54] the other end is a true, is a really, really true picture of what the person can do. But

[00:16:01] I'd say another thing as well, which is, there's a kind of accountability thing to high stakes

[00:16:06] as well, which is, so I'm a type one diabetic. And I have to assess myself every day. So I measure

[00:16:15] my blood sugars every day.

[00:16:16] Every hour.

[00:16:18] And that, I guess is like a kind of, that's sort of like a formative assessment. So I'm

[00:16:23] gaining feedback every day thinking, okay, what do I need to do differently? If I eat this,

[00:16:28] you know, how much insulin should I take? If I'm exercising, what should I do differently

[00:16:31] and all that sort of stuff. So that's the sort of model of formative assessment. However,

[00:16:36] I often, I don't do those things well, and I lose track of myself. And one thing that's

[00:16:42] really good for me is every six months to have a high stakes assessment with a medical practitioner

[00:16:48] who does all, who takes, you know, my entire health check, looks at my blood sugar for over,

[00:16:54] over three months and tells me off if I'm doing it badly, you know, sets me straight, puts me

[00:17:01] right and says, you're not doing this properly. You need to do it properly. You know? And I think,

[00:17:06] I think injecting a little bit of high stakes into things just focuses the mind and ensures that you

[00:17:14] can get the best out of what you're trying to do. And also it means that, I think there's a nice

[00:17:21] view, isn't there, which is that we can all be intrinsically motivated all the time to do things.

[00:17:26] But I think that's kind of idealistic in that at times people need some extrinsic motivation as

[00:17:34] well, because you do lose your way with whatever you're doing. And particularly, you know, kids who

[00:17:39] are studying at school can lose their way. And I think having that focus, that thing that, you know,

[00:17:44] you know, I need to get to this point. It's important. It matters. You know, like, I think

[00:17:51] there is an argument for it. I think it has its place, but I do agree that I don't think it's,

[00:17:55] you know, I don't think it should be the central focus of any kind of system. And I don't think

[00:18:00] it's necessarily the best way to help students improve. But yeah, I don't think it's necessarily

[00:18:09] a bad thing. I think it can work in some circumstances and in others it's not so appropriate.

[00:18:16] Yeah. And that was actually on our formative and summative episode, which you can find in

[00:18:23] our back at. That one of my conclusions was that actually it's a blunt instrument of a form of

[00:18:30] assessment, but certainly in the system that we've got in this country at the moment, actually

[00:18:38] sometimes blunt instruments kind of do motivate pupils, not motivate, is that the right word?

[00:18:44] But certainly kind of push pupils towards achieving an end goal.

[00:18:50] Yeah.

[00:18:51] But, but my feeling is it's much more about accountability, school accountability.

[00:18:57] Right.

[00:18:57] Than it is about pupil achievement and outcome, because it doesn't have to be assessed in that

[00:19:02] way.

[00:19:03] So do you think it's good for school accountability? Do you think it works for measuring schools

[00:19:10] and how they perform?

[00:19:13] Again, within the system that we've, that we're working with in England? Yes.

[00:19:22] Because I, yeah, it would be, I would love to see a world, can you imagine a world, if, if

[00:19:29] next year we just removed Ofsted and said there is no accountability, schools, you're answerable

[00:19:36] to your local authority, what would happen? I don't know the answer to that.

[00:19:43] What's interesting, I think.

[00:19:44] That's just part of the freedom.

[00:19:46] What's interesting, though, is, I think, is that often, and it comes up in kind of with

[00:19:50] exams, but it's education, I think, all the time, is about it would be great to trial something,

[00:19:57] you know, really, really different as it would. But the problem is, is that when you're dealing

[00:20:02] with children, they get one chance at being this age. And, and it, everything is so dependent

[00:20:10] on the next stage, what they're doing right now, that doing kind of really wide scale experiments

[00:20:16] of the system, there's going to be large cohorts of children that would be impacted, possibly

[00:20:24] really positively, but also catastrophically negatively as well, potentially. So I think,

[00:20:29] you know, that's why I think, in education, things are deliberately cautious. I think you see this

[00:20:37] across education, any reforms need to be deliberately, yeah, cautious and careful, for a reason, because,

[00:20:46] because of who you're dealing with. And I think we've been talking to lots of people about the

[00:20:49] curriculum assessment review. And everyone talking about, because obviously, we're particularly

[00:20:54] focused on the assessment aspect of that. And that has come up from, I think, everyone we've spoken

[00:21:01] to, which is great, is that that real sense of how important it is, and that if anything comes out

[00:21:07] of that, that people want to introduce, it needs to be done with the kind of, you know, who is this

[00:21:12] ultimately affecting over these next few years?

[00:21:14] Can I, can I ask you a quick question, Sam? So when you talk about other countries,

[00:21:19] potentially having, potentially having better systems, what, what is it that they're better,

[00:21:25] those systems are better at doing?

[00:21:28] Well, yes, so that, that does lead to, so my, my general sort of thesis on, on how, how ideally the

[00:21:38] exam system would look, which is they do formative assessment much better than, or much more effectively

[00:21:44] than we do in this country. Not, and, and that is to say, not only do they do, you know, the,

[00:21:55] the formative assessment that, that we do fairly well in, in the classroom, just like the checking

[00:22:00] in, the hinge questions, the one-to-ones, the, the sort of guiding the student onward to the

[00:22:05] next piece of work, that stuff, which, which, which we do it okay here, but they also treat

[00:22:12] their summative assessment as formative assessment. So those high stakes exams,

[00:22:17] you get to the end of that. So my, my example, I did, I did three A levels. I did, um, English,

[00:22:29] art and history A level, and I was predicted a B in each of those A levels. Uh, I got a B in English,

[00:22:38] I got a B in art. Um, and when it came to history, I sat the exam and I smashed it. I thought I'd done

[00:22:46] really, really well at my history exam. Uh, got the certificate at the end and I'd got, this, this,

[00:22:54] this tells you how old I am because it's only existed for a short period of time, but

[00:23:02] what's that noise? He doesn't want you to tell us how you did in history.

[00:23:09] Oh, is that me? Oh goodness. Okay. That's me. That is me.

[00:23:15] That's our, that's our doorbell, which has been set to a Halloween theme.

[00:23:21] Amazing. And I'd not heard it yet. Okay. So I got a B in English. I got a B in art. I sat my history

[00:23:34] exam and I thought I've done really well in my history exam. Absolutely smashed it. Came out at

[00:23:38] the other end and I'd got an N. Do you remember N grades? Oh, vaguely. Yeah. Like a U, wasn't it?

[00:23:45] Well, but there was a U as well. It was kind of like, it was like U plus. I don't know why.

[00:23:51] U plus. Was it better than U? I think it was better than U. Right. But it was like no grade,

[00:23:57] but it wasn't the U. Anyway. Anyway, I think nowadays that would be challenged sort of straight

[00:24:06] up. Like, yeah, yeah. Like the school would be, be sort of saying, okay, well let's go back to the

[00:24:12] exam board and find out why. But back then, this is that 1990, I can't remember, in the mid nineties.

[00:24:20] The glory days.

[00:24:22] That's right.

[00:24:25] That wasn't the case. And so, and it was fine because I got onto a degree and I got the course

[00:24:30] I wanted. But I do always look back at that and think, oh, okay. But, so the problem is

[00:24:39] then, so I got an N. I don't know why I got an N. I don't know. Nobody said to me, okay.

[00:24:45] What's the context?

[00:24:46] Oh, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

[00:24:47] Yeah. So all of these, you know, you struggled really, this question here. Okay. So let's

[00:24:52] develop that. Let's move on from that. Let's, let's. And so maybe, maybe I struggled a bit

[00:24:56] in my, during my degree because maybe I wasn't very good at writing essays and that sort of

[00:25:03] thing. Now, had I, had somebody sat down with me and said, okay, here's the assessment.

[00:25:07] It's told us that you've got this. And so that, that's my. I, I, I completely agree

[00:25:11] with that. I mean, I think like the thing of like you in that situation are left with

[00:25:17] a feeling that you're not very good at this, but no one's explained to you why. Yeah.

[00:25:22] Yeah. Why, you know, what, what's the thing that's, that's gone. And you, you're right.

[00:25:25] I think to the extent that there are, there have been improvements in terms of you are

[00:25:30] able to obtain, sorry, you are able to obtain some of that feedback now. It's still not that

[00:25:36] easy to do though, to be honest. And often there's a cost attached to it as well. Um,

[00:25:42] so, uh, it's, um, yeah, I, I, I do agree. Like if you take any form of assessment, you should

[00:25:48] be able to find out afterwards what you did well, what you did badly, how you can improve.

[00:25:55] You know, I, and I think even if it's a summative assessment, I don't think there's, there's

[00:26:01] any good reason for not giving or attempting to give people that feedback. I mean, the system

[00:26:06] is obviously in the, in the UK, you're talking about vast numbers of students, vast numbers

[00:26:11] of exams. So the system is huge. And so I think often we do run into problems from a scale point

[00:26:18] of view of like, what is it possible to do, um, at that level of scale? Yeah. Um, and

[00:26:25] I think you see that with like digital exams as well, trying to roll that out. So for most

[00:26:31] people that would seem just like an absolute no brainer, like surely the whole system would

[00:26:35] be more efficient, easier to manage. And from students would probably, uh, to a large degree

[00:26:41] now would, would represent their normal way of working pretty well. Yeah. But you know,

[00:26:47] it will take time I think to roll that out just because you're trying to create this new

[00:26:52] system at scale and you've got to try and take everybody with you and make sure that it

[00:26:56] works because it is high stakes. So make sure that it works, you know, if it fails, then

[00:27:01] it's a disaster. So, um, yeah, I think scale, scale is potentially one thing that that's

[00:27:08] interesting about, you know, maybe countries like the UK, France, big kind of Western countries

[00:27:15] is like, is how do you examine, assess at scale as well for a national kind of system?

[00:27:23] Yeah. So, uh, so I suppose, I mean, to go back to those Nordic countries, so what, what

[00:27:29] I suppose they do very well is at those transition points, they mop it up much better. So at the

[00:27:35] transition point, you've got much more communication between one school and the next. In fact, the,

[00:27:41] the sort of the middle school is 10 years and, and you've got communication all the way along

[00:27:46] and you might often carry the same teacher over and, and, and that sort of thing. And

[00:27:51] these are, like you say, scale is an issue, but, but these are things that we could embed

[00:27:57] better. We all know how awful transition is kind of from primary to secondary and, and

[00:28:03] secondary to sixth form in certain institutions. It's, it's not seamless.

[00:28:09] I've got a sort of, um, a similar thing as well, which I've noticed, which actually goes

[00:28:15] along, you know, like in your situation, you're saying, you know, I didn't do as well as I

[00:28:20] expected to do in this exam and I've got no feedback. I don't understand why, but I often

[00:28:26] see as well, people who have got what they need. So they move on. But again, as well,

[00:28:32] they're not obtaining any feedback about it. So because, because essentially they're like,

[00:28:38] oh yeah, it's fine. I've got what I need and I'll just move on. You know, the exact,

[00:28:41] the exam was just a means to an end. Yeah. Then they don't want to know. They're not interested.

[00:28:48] You know, it doesn't matter.

[00:28:49] It's actually that, that feedback is actually really important for teachers as well.

[00:28:52] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:52] Isn't it? You know, so for the next cohort.

[00:28:55] Transition. Yeah. Like moving on to the next place, you'd want to understand a bit about

[00:29:00] what that student's particular strengths and weaknesses were rather than just, you know,

[00:29:05] kind of set of, set of results. I mean, it's interesting when you do things like CATS assessments

[00:29:10] with year sevens. So, um, I run those. You actually get quite detailed information from those back.

[00:29:18] Right. Do you? Which, yeah, which you can then use throughout your school to kind of inform

[00:29:25] practice, you know, so you can understand a lot about students' abilities across a range of

[00:29:31] different areas. Um, and, um, and you can highlight strengths and weaknesses and things like that. And

[00:29:38] then everybody's got access to that information and they can use it to, to kind of inform their,

[00:29:43] their teaching. So yeah, that, uh, I, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think, you know, like any kind

[00:29:49] of assessment, getting, getting decent feedback from it, I think is a absolute must. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:55] And I think what, what was it, you just said it, Sophie, about actually the benefits to teachers

[00:30:00] as well, that actually sort of being part of that, it's a learning partnership. It's between the

[00:30:06] teacher and the students. So actually everybody should benefit from assessment, not just the pupil

[00:30:11] or, or, or whoever is benefiting from it. It should be the teacher saying, okay, I understand where

[00:30:17] you're struggling and therefore I can adapt my teaching further. And it should be the pupil being

[00:30:22] able to say, okay, I understand where I'm up to and therefore I can adapt. Yeah, definitely.

[00:30:40] So I think what's, what I found interesting, and I said at the, at the, in my introduction to,

[00:30:47] to the, to the, my podcast, but, but actually it's some of those really straightforward assessment

[00:30:56] facts or, um, bits of, bits of information hacks, um, ways of doing assessment that as a classroom

[00:31:07] teacher, and I was, I was always a classroom teacher, not, not, not in, in leadership at all.

[00:31:12] I just wasn't even aware of it. I knew, I knew what, I knew I had to run assessment. I knew I had

[00:31:20] to get my pupils to that, that, that next big test. I knew I had to do formative assessment in the

[00:31:25] classroom, but there is so much more to it than, than I sort of even had any sort of comprehension

[00:31:31] of. So I suppose for me with, with the Obsessed with Assessment podcast, what I'm thinking is, well,

[00:31:36] if I didn't know that stuff, then, then who does? And maybe it's because I was particularly

[00:31:45] head in the clouds, had no idea what was going on, but I suspect there are a lot of teachers

[00:31:50] out there who, who just think, yeah, I have to just do like, just roll it out.

[00:31:54] So you, are you talking about sort of techniques here, Sam?

[00:31:57] Yeah. So let me, let me tell you some of my, some of my sort of favourite things that we've,

[00:32:03] we've spoken about. So, so the value of formative and, and summative assessment respectively,

[00:32:08] which obviously we've, we've touched on quite a lot here, um, terms that, that, you know,

[00:32:15] you bandy around and, and I was quite comfortable with the distinction between the two, but, but

[00:32:20] never gave any thought to, okay, like you said, um, John, like, what is the purpose? Why,

[00:32:26] why am I doing this? Except beyond the obvious, oh, it's to get a result from my pupil.

[00:32:32] So, so like the use of formative as that more sort of sensitive developmental, um, learning

[00:32:40] partnership tool for students and teachers, I would never have thought of it in, in quite

[00:32:45] that way. And then the use of, of summative as that more, um, blunt instrument for, for

[00:32:51] hammering out incomes, um, kind of carrot and stick for pupils, but also for school accountability.

[00:32:56] Again, I would never have thought of those things in that way. So, so it's just been sort of

[00:33:01] that sort of thing is, is quite eyeopening. Um, and then, uh, what else, what else have I enjoyed

[00:33:09] doing? Um, well, yeah, in terms of technique, so, so metacognition, I'd never given metacognition

[00:33:16] any thought before. And I think there are so many, the thing is that I'm in a very fortunate

[00:33:24] position that I'm working for a business that gives me time to be able to just sit and read

[00:33:29] and to find out about, about how, how this all works. But when I was teaching, I didn't

[00:33:35] have time to do that. So, so metacognition, things like, um, techniques like distributed

[00:33:41] practice. Are you, are you comfortable with distributed practice?

[00:33:44] No.

[00:33:44] So distributed practice, the idea of, of spacing out learning. So instead of, if you say, right,

[00:33:50] I've got two hours to revise this test that I've got on Friday, it is much more effective

[00:33:58] not to revise for two hours on Thursday night, but it's much more effective to do half an hour

[00:34:03] on Monday, half an hour on Tuesday, half an hour on Wednesday, Thursday, because that embeds it into

[00:34:09] your permanent memory much more effectively. And therefore, um, yeah, and therefore it is much

[00:34:16] easier to retain than to retrieve at the point of the exam. So something like that is a really

[00:34:21] simple tool to, um, be aware of both in terms of the way you deliver in your, the sessions you

[00:34:28] deliver in your class, but also in terms of how you advise your pupils. I had no idea that that was,

[00:34:33] that that was even a concept. Um, and then things like, uh, well, retrieval practice,

[00:34:40] retrieval track practice being where you, where you test yourself on the piece of work that you're

[00:34:44] revising. So actually that, I did a podcast on this, but, but that distributed practice model,

[00:34:50] if you do half an hour on Monday, where you, where you just do the, do this sort of absorption

[00:34:56] of, of the material, then half an hour on Tuesday, where you test yourself against it,

[00:35:01] half an hour on Wednesday, you do a little bit more reading and assimilation half an hour on Thursday,

[00:35:06] where you test yourself against it, then you've got a far better chance of getting better scores

[00:35:11] on Friday when you go into the test. And again, that, that's just, I don't know, it sounds like

[00:35:18] a no brainer, but to me, it was just a moment of sort of revelation, I suppose.

[00:35:24] And what about the, the sort of importance of assessment? How do you rank now the importance of,

[00:35:30] like as a classroom teacher, how, how do you think you would rank the importance of assessment in

[00:35:35] terms of the development of students? Like how important is it?

[00:35:42] In, yeah, well, I, I, I would say very important, but, but with that, um, with that understanding that,

[00:35:52] that to me, it's the formative assessment side of things, which is, is the important side for the

[00:35:57] pupil. Like we say, I think the summative assessment is good for school accountability,

[00:36:02] but I think that that's, that's something that, um, simply put, I think all assessments should be

[00:36:09] formative, even when it's summative. Yeah. So, so if you've, as, as we've discussed already,

[00:36:14] if you've got an exam that needs to be used formatively, if you've got a end of unit test,

[00:36:20] that needs to be used formatively. If you're doing formative assessment,

[00:36:23] it obviously is being used in that way. So, but, so it's very beneficial. And again,

[00:36:29] you know, with that nod to the Nordic countries. Do you know, sorry, Sam, to interrupt you. One

[00:36:33] thing that's really interesting is that we always used to run all our mock exams right at the end

[00:36:38] of term. So you do a mock exam. So the kids would do their mock exams and then they go off on holiday

[00:36:44] and then they come back and they'll get the result or whatever, but there'd never be any like,

[00:36:49] and thankfully after like quite a lot of pushing, like we've moved the mock exams now,

[00:36:55] like several weeks forward. So when the kids do the exam, like there's actually a process for,

[00:37:01] for, so that they're not just treated like a summer, a pure summative assessment.

[00:37:06] Well, Sophie and John, that has been really, really fascinating. I suspect we've probably gone long.

[00:37:12] I'm going to have to trim you down in the edit or something because you're just so interesting.

[00:37:19] Thanks, Sam. It's been a pleasure.

[00:37:21] We don't hold grudges if you, if you add it to us, that's fine.

[00:37:24] Well, and I mean, goodness me in, in the presence of these number one podcasters,

[00:37:29] this, this crowded, crowded market.

[00:37:32] It is really crowded.

[00:37:33] You see, what's key, Sam, is that we described it as an exams and assessment podcast.

[00:37:39] That is true.

[00:37:40] Thereby narrowing the playing field.

[00:37:44] But does that mean I can take exams and assessment separately?

[00:37:49] Well, have you got those?

[00:37:51] Yeah.

[00:37:51] No, I think you could take assessment separately if you wanted to.

[00:37:54] It's there, it's open.

[00:37:56] Yeah, it's open for you to take it by storm.

[00:38:02] So, thank you so much.

[00:38:04] You can get in touch on our email address, which is assessment at twinkle.co.uk.

[00:38:10] Please also leave comments on whatever podcast platform you can find a comment box on.

[00:38:18] Please leave a comment.

[00:38:21] And we'll be back at some point.

[00:38:23] Thank you so much for listening and goodbye for now.

[00:38:29] Thank you so much for listening to the Exam Man podcast.

[00:38:31] We really, really appreciate your support.

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[00:38:42] Bye.