The BBC’s education writer Mike Baker thinks he sees a “long-term change of direction” in the UK’s love affair with “accountability” (aka standardized testing).
The latest sign was this week’s report from the Commons Schools Committee. It delivered a message we don’t often hear from politicians: trust the teachers.
The MPs [Members of Parliament] argued that the “complexity” of the school accountability system in England is creating “a barrier to genuine school improvement”.
The report highlighted the “adverse effects” that often flow from a target-driven school culture and criticised Ofsted [Office for Standards in Education] for taking a narrow, results-based view of learning in schools.
A report from a government “Expert Group” suggests that improving the reliability of teacher assessments would allow the country’s schools to move away from their reliance of “externally marked tests”.
The report did not argue for an end to all external assessment. But it called for a shift toward more within-school, teacher-led assessment. This, it said, would not only save money but also a lot of the teaching time that is lost to exam preparation and administration.
And this is the key point: it is not about dropping school accountability altogether, but about making sure it does not obstruct teaching and learning.
Baker refers to the UK testing program as a “crude” way to assess learning, one that has had “unintended effects” such as narrowing the curriculum.
It’s hard to tell from this one article whether or not any of these trends away from standardized testing are actually going to take root in British schools (much less their political institutions).
However, it’s all stuff we also need to be considering on this side of the pond.
