News

Scrapping testing is positive but monitoring essential, says expert

(15 October 2008)

Government’s decision to scrap national tests for 14-year old pupils welcomed with caution by leading education expert.

Durham University's Prof. Peter Tymms, Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring says: “This decision is of major educational importance and could have a positive impact. But, schools do need to monitor the progress of their students. They also need to be able to assess their impact objectively. “The advantage of the decision is a decrease in high stakes testing. The fear is that pupil failure will go unnoticed and schools judgments will be based on opinion. Teachers want to know what pupils know and can do and they are generally very good at judging this. But assessment data can help enormously and the opportunity now exists for schools to use assessments designed for their own use and not for external accountability. We have been seriously constrained up to now by the use of pencil and paper tests. With the freedom that we now have following the abolition of KS3 tests we can now capitalise on the exciting possibilities of IT and provide pupils with computer adaptive assessments. These are tests which are tailored for each child and cut down the time involved. They give very precise assessments of what children know and can do.” The Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) provides indicator systems to schools and colleges, the confidentiality of these systems renders them unique. CEM is the largest educational research unit in a UK university. Established in 1983, the Centre works with schools, colleges, education authorities and government agencies to provide high quality information through scientifically grounded research. CEM is the home of a widely used family of monitoring systems including ALIS, Yellis, MidYIS and PIPS.