ChApter 9

embedding assessment
for learning

Assessment for learning or formative assessment is an integral part of teach-

ing and learning in our school systems, but how often do schools assess the
true impact of their policy on learning? Take your whole-school assessment
for learning policy. Is it current and does it easily translate to practice in your
classroom? Is it relevant to you and your pupils? When was the last time the
assessment for learning policy was reviewed? Were you involved in the review?
While these questions may seem simple, they are of great importance. For any
policy to work well and to have the desired impact, staff must buy in to the pro-
cess. It must be relevant and translate easily to their daily practice. They need
to see the value (what’s in it for them?). Otherwise (and let’s be really honest
here), it is put in a drawer, filed to be read at ‘some other time’ and never sees
the light of day again beyond the annual one-hour session at a whole-school
professional development event (where, at the start of the year, some staff are
eagerly nodding, keenly taking notes, but then, with ‘everything else’, it was
most likely quickly forgotten about; others are simply sitting there thinking
‘Here we go again’). Do a quick quiz (just for fun) and survey staff in your
school (on a more serious note, listen carefully to the answers). How many can
tell you what your current policy says (or indeed where it is)? How many
can tell you how they use the current whole-school policy to support them
in their classroom? Can they tell you how it links to other policies (in other
words, it should not be a stand-alone document)? Has the whole-school assess-
ment for learning policy improved pupil progress in their classroom? How?
Initiatives have come and gone as part of different national drives, but the
fundamental principle of assessment for learning in our classroom remains and
is present in all phases of education and across all subjects, providing a com-
mon ground for progress, involving teachers (including senior leaders), pupils,
parents and governors. Any assessment for learning policy in schools should
be sound in its basic principle and be applied or used to support the next gov-
ernment initiative rather than being rewritten around a new initiative. Why?
Because assessment for learning should be at the heart of the classroom and it
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should be used to drive learning. Any initiative can be supported through your
assessment for learning policy; after all, a lot of government money has been
invested into the assessment for learning agenda and we must be honest about
the cost impact. Has this money translated to better learners in our classrooms?
Has it improved the quality of assessment for learning in all classrooms? Has it
impacted on pupil progress for all pupils? Remember, some of these initiatives
never really got off the ground or were quickly withdrawn. Many seemingly
reinvent the wheel (albeit under a different name). I can recite countless times
being in the staffroom eagerly awaiting the something ‘new’ only to (unfortu-
nately) be able to say or hear others saying, ‘But that’s just …....... we did this
x years ago!’ So, is the government getting it wrong? While I do not want to
get into any form of political debate, this has been an ongoing contention in
education, with policy-makers at the top (often with no experience in teaching
and learning) think-tanking policies (at considerable cost) that sound great on
paper but will never really translate into daily practice and, therefore, will not
have a significant impact on learning. We must invest in and support teachers
(many of whom may not have experienced recent training in new pedago-
gies) in becoming better practitioners and, most importantly, quality assure
that training. Is the training excellent? Without excellence in training, how can
teachers become truly outstanding practitioners?
Assessment for learning must be more than pages of policy or the current
buzz word in your school. It must an integral part of the teaching and learn-
ing agenda, being workable, meaningful to and understood by all stakehold-
ers – most importantly, teaching staff, pupils and their parents. When you
design any policy, be very clear about what you want to achieve on a whole-
school, department and class-teacher level. Think about this very carefully
first and then think about how you are going to achieve these common aims.
Only then can you really produce a policy which has clarity and purpose. Far
too often, schools write a policy based on something written a long time ago
or on policies ‘borrowed’ from another school or institution or on a ‘standard
policy’. What you must remember is success comes from thinking about your
workforce, your pupils and the needs of all stakeholders, to make something
productive and workable.

Introducing new techniques

I highly recommend, when you run assessment for learning training, that this
goes beyond a member of leadership relaying the latest techniques to an audi-
ence of teaching staff. The very best training in this field involves teachers
‘experiencing’ the process. This means running small fifteen-minute sessions
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where teachers go on a carousel in groups and experience different assess-

ment strategies. This can be the effective use of voting mechanisms or the
effective use of ABCD cards, effective questioning sessions, self-assessment or
peer-assessment workshops and so on. It is my belief that teachers are much
more likely to engage with the technique or strategy when they actually have
the opportunity to see it in practice and to then think about how they could
apply this in their own teaching.
The same can be said for developing a whole-school marking policy. Ask
teachers to imagine they are a pupil receiving various examples of ‘marked
work’ and then ask them to focus on a series of questions, such as:

• Which will allow me to identify my next steps in learning?

• Which supports me in understanding my errors?
• Which challenges me and encourages me to think?
• Does the grade matter?
• Does the comment matter?
• Which did I look at first?
• Why?
• Did looking at, for example, the grade first (this is a natural direction) de-
value the comments?
• Where comment-only marking was used, was I more likely to read it care-
fully than when a grade and comment were used?

There are many more questions which can be asked, but the purpose is
for staff to work together to determine which factors best support progress
in learning. In making this sort of workshop interactive, staff can visualise
the feedback that would allow pupils to make progress and they can work
together as a collective body to develop a whole-school marking and feedback
policy that will enhance learning and that, most importantly, they feel owner-
ship and understanding of. This leads to the discussion on timely feedback,
the workability of any marking or assessment policy and a focused discussion
on moving forwards as a collective body of professionals. This empowers
teaching staff far more than if you write a marking policy and then impose
terms. After all, a marking policy must be workable for those who employ it
on a daily or regular basis, otherwise it will inevitably fail and never be the
success that it should be in schools. Involving staff in this way allows them to
really understand what we mean by ‘marking and feedback’ rather just having
to listen to a speech and then decipher a policy and try to make the best of
it. In addition, if staff experience this process then quality assurance should
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be a more focused activity because they have an awareness of whole-school

or department expectations. Any questions they ask during these types of
sessions will be focused on the marking itself and on strategies to implement
it rather than being negative feedback typical of that received when schools
impose a policy and staff react with questions that are not related to develop-
ing marking, for example.

Quality assurance
The questions you ask as part of the quality assurance (QA) process are impor-
tant, but more important is what you do with the information that comes from
the QA. It is very important that, as part of the QA process – whether as indi-
vidual staff observations or department reviews – an action plan is produced
which sets clear targets or action points, success criteria (how to meet and
evidence these) and a timeline for monitoring and review. If the monitoring or
review process is one year down the line, the QA will have little impact and
is probably not worth doing in the first place. The monitoring process should
include regular line management, team or peer meetings, where performance
and support for future development are discussed. To be clear, it is not only
failing departments or teachers that should be given an action plan following
review, but also outstanding departments and individuals as well. We must
challenge and have high expectations of all; if we don’t also challenge our
outstanding departments or practitioners, they can become ‘coasting schools’,
quickly losing their edge and innovation.
Let us consider the example where a member of staff is inadequate in
their use of questioning to assess learning. If we simply set that member of
staff a target, where they need to go and observe another member of staff
and think about the questioning in the lesson, the impact (in reality) will
probably be minimal on their own practice and, in some cases, they will
simply go along with it because they have to. A more constructive approach
would be a joint observation, with a line manager or a colleague (perhaps
better) accompanying the individual member of staff, combined with use
of a focused observation sheet featuring key questions. On the room plan,
where would you place crosses for pupils who are asked questions? How
many pupils answered a question? Did the member of staff being observed
adopt a hands down policy? How did they respond to pupils’ answers?
What type of questions did they ask? How did they use this to develop
learning? There are lots more questions that could be used during the ob-
servation, but the important point to come out of this is the subsequent
discussion. Does the member of staff who was underperforming now have a
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greater understanding of questioning in the classroom? The next step would

be to support them in planning a lesson and to think about how they use
questioning to develop learning. This can be observed or it can be videoed
and used to support their professional development. Obviously, this is an
ongoing process, but it is necessary to support staff in their development
following any QA – this applies at individual-teacher and department level.
Other strategies include using professional triads, where staff work as a
three to develop different aspects of teaching and learning; again, however,
time must be invested in discussion and observations otherwise the activi-
ties are of little value. It is the focus on supporting staff to improve, not on
competency, that shifts the focus of observation from threat to support, thus
changing the mind-set of staff, resulting in more staff actively participating
in and engaging with the process.
When you conduct a QA process, first ensure that you and staff are very
clear on the focus of that QA. This must be communicated. If, for example,
the focus of the QA is assessment for learning, then staff must be informed
that this will be the focus of the lesson observations and be clear on what the
process will involve – observation, book sampling, data analysis and discus-
sions with both staff and pupils. The report should be timely and include the
specific action plan (individual or department). Staff must be involved in the
process and understand the importance for improvement. The most innova-
tive and outstanding teachers and departments I have worked with remain so
because they constantly challenge themselves and others around them and
work to develop new techniques and strategies within the classroom, sharing
best practice at the heart of the school. If they had stayed static – for example,
producing the same lesson they did ten years ago – there is every chance that,
in today’s educational climate, it would no longer be outstanding and could,
indeed, be judged significantly worse. Yet some staff do still churn out the
same lesson year after year, with little thought for their audience and certainly
having not evaluated their lesson for future use.
The purpose of any QA process is to support teachers and build expertise
and capacity in the education system to deliver positive outcomes for pupils.
It helps to raise standards, build expectations and improve levels of consist-
ency across schools and teaching staff. Assessment is integral to learning,
teaching and the curriculum, so monitoring, self-evaluation and planning for
improvement (all part of any QA model) apply equally to assessment. Rigor-
ous and robust QA gives confidence in teachers’ judgements and provides
assurance to parents and others that all pupils receive appropriate recognition
for their achievements in line with agreed national standards and are pro-
gressing in line with expectations. The QA process runs throughout the heart
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of any school and should challenge staff in a supportive and self-improving

environment.

Marking audit
Very often, schools (on a department or whole-school level) conduct mark-
ing audits where they review whether staff are correctly adopting the whole-
school marking policy. But how do you conduct this evaluation and what do
you do with these results? I am, personally, a believer in going into classrooms
and randomly picking up books (to the horror of some teachers) and talking
directly with pupils. This gives you a picture of whether marking and feed-
back are timely and whether it is having an impact on the pupils themselves.
This will come from listening carefully to the comments that the pupils make.
For instance, if they say they are doing well because they always ‘get a good
and a grade B’, then you know that marking is having little impact on their
academic progress. Why? Because the pupil has not mentioned anything
about developing as a learner. If the interactive marking process is used, as
discussed in Chapter 7, then the discussions with pupils will be much more
learning-focused. They will be able to discuss why they are confident in a spe-
cific subject area and how they know. The ‘how they know’ comes, of course,
from the interactive marking process. This is not about targeting criticism at
staff, but looking at whether the marking policy is working in practice for
those who it is supposed to benefit – that is, the pupils and those who imple-
ment it (the staff).
Remember, if you ask staff for a selection of pupils’ books then there is a
danger (and we all know it happens) that the member of staff then back-marks
the work; while this may result in a book with lots of teacher input, it is the
impact on pupils we need to determine and that can only come from the pu-
pils themselves. So, if the focus of your QA is marking, then walk around the
school, pick up a sample of books randomly, interview the pupils and then, of
course, the member of staff (this often doesn’t happen). The member of staff
must have the opportunity to discuss with you during this process. What you
need to focus on is whether your whole-school policy is supporting that mem-
ber of staff (or collectively the body of staff) to mark productively. If it is and it
is simply that the member of staff is not engaging with policy then, of course,
this is a different matter. This review should, again, not be an exercise simply
because we may be being inspected (although this is rather sceptical of me, we
can all think of a school where this has happened), but done because we need
to be confident that the assessment for learning policy is working in action.
Ask the right questions when you assess the impact of marking:
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• Is marking timely?
• Is marking comment-only?
• Do pupils have the opportunity to respond to comments?
• How is this supported?
• How are errors addressed?
• Are spelling and grammatical errors corrected?
• Is there evidence of peer- or self-assessment?
• What is the quality of this assessment?

Lesson study
There is an initiative that is outlined in detail on the Lesson Study UK
website (www.lessonstudy.co.uk) which talks about slowing down the
observation or learning process by focusing only on three students during
the lesson observation (this technique is used very successfully in Japan).
Essentially, you decide as a team (of teachers: two, three or perhaps more)
on the focus for the lesson and develop it together. One member of the team
delivers the lesson (or different members deliver different parts). The focus
is not on the ‘teacher delivery’ (thus relieving the pressure that some teach-
ers feel during an observation) but on the impact on the pupil, their learn-
ing and progress. This tells us far more than simply observing the teacher
and attempting to assess the impact on 30 pupils (because, with a global
observation, we know that this will only be superficial) and allows us to
home in on the true impact of our teaching on learning. It makes sense to
focus only on a few pupils (typically three or multiples of three, based,
perhaps, on a low, middle and high achiever) and their development in
learning over the lesson as this will give targeted insight into the impact of
teaching. There are cost implications here, clearly, in teacher time and staff-
ing; however, in my opinion, if we are to raise standards in teaching and
learning this is a worthwhile investment and a shift in how we observe les-
sons is, perhaps, now needed. It leads us, in a collaborative way, to look at
how to improve teaching and how to improve learning, focusing on moving
forwards, building on teaching strategies, and on development rather than
on looking back too much at what didn’t work. Being more open in this way
and using observation as a tool for improvement is the direction we need to
move in if we truly want to develop our teaching strategies and, ultimately,
produce better learners who can compete not only nationally, but also in an
international sphere.
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Summary
In order to embed assessment for learning, think carefully about your school
priorities and professional staff training days. Staff development needs to be
high priority. These are often the only opportunities throughout the year that
staff gather collectively as a body for training. Therefore, any training needs
to be highly focused and in-house training offers the opportunity for you to
tailor training to priorities within your school (whether you invite an external
trainer/speaker or not). Always make sure that staff are actively involved in
the training (much the same as learning in the classroom) and ensure that any
policies that are to be written or rewritten involve staff participation (staff buy-
in). This will lead to the success of your policy and support the embedding
process. Teacher professional development is essential to improving pupil
performance and achievement, ultimately contributing to a better national
economy. There is nothing more important to bettering our economy than edu-
cation and the teaching profession have great responsibility for the education
of our future. We must be cautious, however, with the development we con-
tinually impose. There are so many new initiatives in education that, often,
we don’t have time to synthesise and thoroughly embed them into our daily
practice. If we took all of the latest buzz words and strategies we could have
some very confused classrooms. This is often why teachers are cynical about
new initiatives. However, assessment for learning is a key strategy in raising
standards; time and resources must be correctly directed to secure teacher
knowledge, confidence, understanding and development. One final thing to
remember is that, even for the very best teachers, often things fail. The secret
to their success is that they evaluate why and they try again with a slightly dif-
ferent approach, persevering until they get it just right. To me, that’s the secret
to success: being your own critic, being able to evaluate and then implement
new ways of working and – perhaps most importantly – not being afraid to ask
for support or to discuss things openly with your colleagues.

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Assessment for learning is an intrinsic part of the learning process and inte-
gral to any outstanding lesson. Unlike many other initiatives, it is here to stay.
Why? Because (if applied correctly) it has a significant impact on learning. In
one form or another it has been part of teaching practices for a long time and,
as it evolves, assessment for learning will, no doubt, continue to improve the
quality of learning in our classrooms.
The following acts as a checklist which can be used as a reference guide to
ensure assessment for learning is at the heart of your planning:
Start of the lesson:

✔ Are you greeting pupils as they arrive?

✔ Have you planned a simple bell work activity?
✔ Do you have clear learning outcomes (learning intention and context)?
✔ Do pupils know and understand success criteria or progress markers?
✔ Have you prepared a starter activity which links to the learning?
✔ Does the starter activity allow you and pupils to ‘know where pupils are
starting from’ (benchmarking)?
✔ Does it allow you to progress to the next learning cycle?
✔ Is the starter activity open or closed?
✔ Have you planned an appropriate assessment strategy and at what phase of
the learning is this happening?
✔ Have you thought of higher-order questions and are you fully prepared to
‘bounce’ these around the classroom?
✔ Have you thought about any misconceptions which may arise?
✔ Can you move forwards in the lesson plan or do you need to change
direction?
✔ Do learners now know where they are in their learning?

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Main body of the lesson:

✔ How are you introducing new concepts or skills?

✔ Are they developed through a single activity or a series of successive and
progressive learning cycles?
✔ Is there a parallel structure, with some learners following a single learning
cycle and others multiple cycles, leading to the same learning outcome?
✔ Have you planned activities that engage learners and encourage learn-
ers to think; have you planned for the process of assessment for learn-
ing during learning?
✔ Does assessment for learning support differentiation?
✔ Have you considered different learning styles in planning activities and
during the assessment process?
✔ Have you used a variety of different activities which are accessible for
all pupils and appropriate formative assessment strategies implicit to the
activity?
✔ Have you carefully planned any collaborative learning opportunities?
✔ Do the techniques you are using provide both you and pupils with qual-
ity information to support progress?
✔ Can pupils confidently move on to the next learning cycle?
✔ How do you know?
✔ Are pupils actively involved in their own learning and next steps?
✔ What criteria depict success in learning?
✔ Are these truly learning criteria?
✔ Have you used the learning environment to support assessment for learning?
✔ Have you communicated effectively with any teaching assistants to ensure
they support the assessment for learning process?
✔ Is there a climate and culture of autonomy in learning?

Plenary:

✔ Can all learners access the plenary activity?

✔ Have you differentiated the activity?
✔ Does the activity demonstrate further progress or is it just more of the same?
✔ Have you returned to the Big Question and allowed sufficient time
for pupils to reflect and to compare their initial and final responses,
making an assessment of their progress?
✔ Have you asked higher-order questions to ensure assessment in higher-
order thinking skills?
✔ Are pupils asking key questions and what is the cognitive level of these
questions?

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✔ Can pupils demonstrate progress and enter into learning dialogue?

✔ Do they know how to further challenge their own learning?

Questioning:

✔ How often do you tell pupils something (keep in mind how you might
have turned this into a question to draw learning from pupils)?
✔ How many questions do you ask?
✔ When do you ask questions?
✔ How many of these questions are open or closed?
✔ What is the cognitive level of the questions (are they lower or higher order)?
✔ Do you adopt a hands down policy and how is this managed?
✔ How do you select the pupils who will answer?
✔ Who do you ask (draw a rough plan of the room and each time a pupil
answers a question or is asked a question, mark with a cross; this
will allow you to see the distribution of questioning, i.e. whether
a) you always ask the same few; b) the same pupils offer solutions; c) you ask
all pupils at some point during the lesson. You may be surprised with the
results of the observation!)?
✔ What is the wait time after asking a question?
✔ What is your response time?
✔ Do you allow sufficient time for thinking before answering?
✔ What is the impact of questioning on learning?

Marking and feedback:

✔ Have pupils had sufficient training to be able to effectively assess their

own work or the work of a classmate?
✔ Are pupils aware of what constitutes good practice?
✔ Is marking an active process?
✔ Do you challenge pupils through marking and feedback?
✔ Is there a focus on how to improve?
✔ Are pupils given the opportunity to make these improvements?
✔ Are pupils given the opportunity to discuss?
✔ Do pupils benefit from the process?
✔ How do you know?
✔ How do they know?

Data
When you use data think about the following questions:

✔ Do you use data to inform planning?

✔ Do you ‘know’ the person to whom the figures refer?
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✔ Do you use the data to support pupils rather than define them?
✔ Do you know and understand where the data comes from?
✔ Do pupils and parents understand the data?

As part of the evaluation process we must ask ourselves:

✔ What do both the raw and value-added data tell us?

✔ How do we compare to all schools nationally and to similar schools?
✔ Do we know what ‘similar’ means and what ‘context’ we are in?
✔ How do different cohorts perform (subject and whole-school analysis)?
✔ How do we compare year-on-year?
✔ Were our predictions accurate?
✔ What do the forward estimates tell us?
✔ How are we going to use the data to inform future planning?
✔ Are staff involved in the evaluation process and do they understand it?
(Is there buy-in?)

Embedding assessment for learning:

✔ Are staff involved in developing policies?

✔ Are policies regularly reviewed?
✔ Is staff training interactive and engaging?
✔ Does training impact on learning in the classroom?
✔ Do staff feel valued?
✔ Is your quality assurance process effective?
✔ Does it develop teaching in a supportive and non-threatening way?
✔ Do all stakeholders buy in to your policy?

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