Chair's Closing Remarks, Regional Launches
Firstly, I want to thank all our speakers and those who have facilitated the workshops. We've heard from an external assessor and glimpsed the future of assessment, in particular the e-assessment agenda. One message however has come through loud and clear: assessment is integral to the process of teaching and learning and is immensely important to all students and trainees - in primary, secondary, further and higher education, and in training and industry; in short, wherever learning takes place. Every day, teachers and trainers make judgements as to whether learning objectives have been met and advise students on the next stage of their learning. Assessment is thus the ultimate tool for Lifelong Learning; it opens doors to Higher Education and the workplace and makes a real difference to people's lives. It follows that the assessments which teachers, trainers, mentors make of individuals should be as valid, fair, reliable and consistent as they can be.
It is here that the Institute has a role to play. Although assessors are already well supported by the awarding bodies and by their respective associations there is a need - as the wide-spread consultation we carried out confirmed - for a body dedicated to improving the quality of assessment carried out by both external and internal assessors, thereby increasing public confidence in assessment standards. The dedicated role of the Institute will be to work with our colleagues in a collaborative way to enhance the status of assessment and assessors themselves.
The public examination system depends on thousands of people such as you who work as examiners and moderators. But every person involved in learning is an assessor. We are developing, in consultation with our stakeholders, a professional framework for membership of the Institute. We want to be an inclusive organisation, one which embraces individuals who are interested, but not active, in assessment (Affiliates) as well as those who have a high level of expertise which, in time, will command the highest recognition of Chartered status. By encouraging people like yourselves to join the Institute and then providing the opportunity for further professional development of their assessment skills, we hope to raise standards of assessment throughout the education and training system, from primary to Higher Education, from apprenticeship to high levels of craftsmanship. By impacting on assessment and raising its standards, we will also be impacting on the standards of attainment of individual learners. How we assess and the quality of our assessments are key to raising standards of achievement.
Society's needs and expectations of the education and assessment systems change over time, particularly in a global world of fierce competition for jobs. The demand for highly skilled individuals who can access knowledge and use it appropriately has never been higher. It's important, therefore, to keep under constant review the appropriate curriculum for the modern world and ensure that the assessment system is fit for purpose. The impact of technology on teaching inevitably impacts on assessment not just in respect of the administration of the system but in how assessments are made. Assessors need to keep up with these developments and feel confident that they can still set appropriate and valid challenges and evaluate reliably the outcomes. The Institute will, in partnership with others, provide continuous professional development to guarantee a competent and confident body of assessors.
New Diplomas are being launched in 2008. The skills and qualities which we want to encourage learners to acquire through a diploma system do not lend themselves to the formal end-of-course examinations which dominate our current system. The Diplomas will, therefore, require us to develop fit for purpose assessment. You may recall that the Tomlinson 14-19 Review anticipated the need for a regime which would allow formative judgements, informed by explicit national standards, criteria and banks of tests, to be formalised into summative statements of achievement. The process would be one of continuously updating judgements on the levels of attainment reached by learners. This is the heart of good teaching and learning and is a process which is already followed in schools, colleges, universities and is the basis of assessment in most vocational courses.
The aspirations of the Tomlinson Review coincide with the assessment for learning initiatives and with suggestions that Key Stage testing should be rooted in the classroom, supported, as Ken has said, by national banks of tests to ensure consistent standards. All that sounds very modern and forward-looking but in reality there is nothing new in such proposals. Over 60 years ago, in 1941, a Government report - the Norwood report - stated that:
Ideally the examination (at 16) is best conducted by the teachers themselves as being those who know their pupils' work and ought therefore to be the best able to form a judgement on it...We think that an examination (at 16) conducted by teachers as part of a general assessment of their pupils would be in the interest of their freedom.. With this development would come greater responsibility for teachers - responsibility for shaping the course of pupils' work by learning how to appraise it rightly. On the basis of wider freedom and greater responsibility rests the increased status which in our opinion the teaching profession should enjoy in the future. Looking at the matter from the side of the pupils, we think that an education which is really child-centred can come about only if freedom is allowed to those who alone can make the individual child the centre of education, namely the teachers themselves.
Those sentiments accord so much with the Tomlinson proposals. Yet the very fact that sixty years on we're still debating this issue suggests that the conditions for both teachers' and the wider public's confidence in assessment rooted in learning and the learning environment have not yet been created. Recent reports from Ofsted which draw attention to weaknesses in assessments in schools and colleges confirm that much still needs to be done to improve assessment practices. The Institute will do all it can to create the conditions whereby teachers' and trainers' judgements will be accepted as valid, reliable and trustworthy by the public. Recognition through membership of the Institute for assessors, including in due course Chartered status, will benefit individuals and the institutions in which they work. Public confidence is an essential ingredient of all assessment systems and is a precursor to any fundamental review of assessment practices.
These launches - which are fully subscribed, indicating the level of interest in this initiative - is the beginning of a process which, we hope, will result in a thriving Institute. We hope that all of you will wish to join us and start the process of the regeneration of assessment practices which may lead to a sea-change in the way we regard assessment in this country. Those of you who join us will find a supportive and receptive Institute in which they as members will have a major role to play to shape its policies and practices. A strong membership will enable the Institute to develop into a strong, learned and respected independent body, able to initiate and participate in debate. A strong Institute will raise the standard of assessment and thereby the standard of attainment of learners. That will benefit individuals and society at large.
Before winding up the conference, I have a few more questions for you - your last chance to play with the technology which has given instant feedback as the conference has progressed. My questions are:
- How useful have you found today's event?
- How interesting have you found today's event?
And the $64 000 dollar question:
- How likely are you to join the Institute?
Finally, I want to pay tribute to all those who have worked incredibly hard to get the Institute to this launch. In particular, thank you to the interim Board, chaired by Mick Walker, which oversaw the process of establishing the Institute as a legal body and guided colleagues in the range of activities which have brought us to today: a network of stakeholders, an interesting and interactive website, our corporate image and logo, and our first magazine. We're starting the process of application to the Privy Council for a Charter, which, if successful, will allow us to call ourselves the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors and allow the most expert members to be called Chartered Assessors. This hard and impressive work has brought the Institute a long way and I thank everyone who made possible this launch.
My last thanks are to you all who have come here to share this historic moment with us. Whether or not you become a member, I hope that we can work together to raise standards of assessment and achievement. Both students and assessors will benefit from that objective.
Thank you all very much and a safe journey home.
Kathleen Tattersall
May 2006