The future of assessment lies outside the exam hall, says AQA

The report, part of a book of essays entitled ‘The Future of Assessment: 2025 and Beyond’, suggests that current trends in the education sector are ‘narrowing the curriculum and focusing on those students whose performance has the greatest impact on the headline accountability measures’.

Penned by AQA’s head of curriculum Alison Wood and director of research and innovation Dr Anton Beguin, the publication calls for ‘a more effective balance between assessment and school accountability’ and comments on how teacher assessment should be ‘professionalised, expert and should contribute substantially to students’ results’.

Brian Lightman, the Association of School and College Leaders general secretary, agrees with the report. After contributing an essay to the blueprint, Lightman said: “For too long the way children are assessed has been dominated by the demands placed on schools by performance tables and a culture of high-stakes accountability.

“This has been at the expense of the important role assessment and feedback should play as part of the learning process, rather than just being a set of external exams at the end of a course.”

Andrew Hall, AQA's chief executive, said: "The assessment system that's served us well for 30 years needs to evolve if it is to keep pace with how the world is changing and the skills and knowledge our young people will need to progress in life in the future. Even we – as an exam board – can see quite clearly the limitations of relying on exams alone.

"When we launched this project two years ago we were providing a platform for a conversation – if we started from scratch now, what would we want our assessment system to look like? But we were quite clear that AQA wasn't steering the conversation – that was for our expert contributors to do. And while they each have their own areas of interest and expertise, we all share one very important goal in common – to get better at assessing the things that matter and using that assessment to inform better teaching and more intelligent accountability."

The publication is the culmination of a major two-year project facilitated by AQA. It represents two years of debate, discussion and thinking across the education sector about how assessment – particularly, formal assessments taken by 15-19 year olds in England – can and should evolve over the next decade.

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