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We use topic tests and mock exams for summative assessment.  Formative assessment as decided by the class teacher.
I think it is important to know about assessment theory as there are times we take several weeks of lesson time away for mock exams with unclear benefits on student progress apart from refining exam technique skills which is important, however, if our students are not knowledge confident that may not be as helpful to us.

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We use both formative and summative. For Formative we try to use retrieval quizzes every lesson and a vocab and translation retrieval test every 2 weeks
It’s been now nearly 2 years since we emphasise the importance of the testing effect through retrieval tests in my department and I can see that that along with “exit tickets” really informe my teaching. And for my students I think they are becoming more aware of how their assessments are mark, so feedback is also a very crucial part of the assessment theory

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In my own context, I do think we have some positive approaches towards assessment. Students only have 3 formative assessments per year, which has scaled back remarkably from four or five years ago, where summative assessments happened at least once a half term. Instead, we do regular formative assessment through whole class feedback, which I think have many positives. The Quigley blog has reinforced my belief that we need to build students up to the big points through smaller, lower level testing. However, students I also believe, need to see where it fits in with the bigger picture.
Perhaps the biggest tension in my current context is the tension between using a shared curriculum and ensuring the teaching is adapted to meet student needs. Having moved to a common curriculum throughout the trust, I think some staff need upskilling in understanding how to balance and use the excellent resources for their own class. A curriculum that is common has many benefits, but the delivery of it in the classroom can not be a one size fits all if formative assessment is to have the full impact.
There is, I believe, a real need for more assessment theory. As teachers (and leaders) we must both often design assessments and the method of assessing, particularly at KS3. When levels were first removed there were so many models of assessment available, but were any particularly effective. It was incredibly difficult to judge this. I think often experience can help us to make more sensible judgements, but theoretical underpinning to enable us to make those informed judgements would be incredibly useful.

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Assessment is something I am becoming increasingly interested in. My experience is that summative assessments are used far too often in my school. As an English teacher, students have been expected to write full essays in responses to texts from the very beginning of Year 7. This results in massive cognitive overload and the inferences based on such assessments are frequently not valid. For example, students might be told that their target is to include more context, when in actual fact the student did know the contextual information, but just ran out of time to include it.
I have begun attempting to make changes which I hope will make the use of assessment more diagnostic and therefore more useful to students. I totally agree with the ideas Alex Quigley discuss in the blog about needing to break down the 'strands' required for the summative assessment and provide students with frequent opportunities to practice and embed the knowledge and skills of the strands before trying to weave them into a thread.
I find it incredibly frustrating when students ask, 'is this an assessment?' by which they really mean, 'is this the day I should try?'. I think this is product of my school's reporting system which encourages teachers to use the score from the previous end of unit assessment on the interim reports. These assessments often don't reliably represent students' learning. I am therefore trying to introduce smaller, more frequent 'evidence-gathering' points for teachers to use in the schemes of learning I am introducing. I think branding is important for my context, given students' attitude towards assessment.
It was interesting to read about the 'testing effect' as this is something I had not really considered and so it has led me to reflect on how we might benefit from this alongside the smaller 'assessments'.

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What assessments do you use regularly in your school?

We try to use a range of assessments across the board.  The easiest ones to consider are end of topic/unit tests which are primarily based on past exam questions.  On a more regular basis low stakes multi choice quizzes can be used as well as listening to students modelling concepts then giving verbal feedback on areas of misconception.

Why do you think it is important to have an understanding of assessment theory?

Assessment for learning (AFL) is an approach to teaching and learning that creates feedback which is then used to improve students' performance.   Assessment if structured correctly should allow students to identify areas that they need to work on and informs us where extra support needs to be put in place.  Well structured assessments should allow students to become more involved in the learning process and from this gain confidence in what they are expected to learn and to what standard.  We need to consider what we want to gain from an assessment and ensure that the construct that we want to look at is appropriately addressed.  It is also important that we consider the role of bias in assessments and to ensure that all students are able to access them.

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In my school we have to provide to pieces of detail assessed work per term and this "target" has turned into a noose to some extent. It doesn't matter where you are in the learning the placement of the assessment is the important thing. This is impossible particularly when terms are viewed the same yet they all are different lengths.
In my department we have use assessment theory to build common assessments to feedback on but I do not expect them to all be done at the same time - they are for the teacher to use to help the progression of learning not as a judgement in most cases.
Assessment theory is key for all to understand including parents - we have to get out of the habit of saying "did you get it all right" as a society to bring testing to a useful level of low stakes.

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In my school we undertake comparative judgements for English writing, mathematical assessments taken from White Rose publications 2 weeks after topics have been taught. There are also termly reading comprehensions and science skills assessments. In addition to this, there are a range of retrieval questions used in lessons as part of formative assessment. As Alex Quigley states we need to consider the reliability and validity of these assessments. I think that it is important to have a deep understanding of assessment theory so that we are clear in who are we assessing for and prevent bias in our questioning. These are areas that I feel need further reading. Teachers use retrieval, but is it effective and are they getting appropriate data from pupils that will feed into future lessons and their learning journey?

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Context:  Primary
What assessments do we use?   Termly PIRA for reading and PUMA for maths (both NFER).  I have recently also worked in a school that used Assertive Mentoring on a fortnightly basis - review the test one week and sit the test independently the next - with the aim to inform teacher planning. Reality:  not much is done about these tests except to provide data for SLT.  No question analysis made. Summative assessment: left up to the woefully under-educated teacher so hit and miss.  Retrieval practice seems to be misunderstood - ask the children a starter question about a previous topic???

The importance?   We spend a lot of our valuable time doing 'assessment' - and a lot of it has no purpose, either to help the children and progress them on (our primary purpose surely) or in terms of informing us as teachers about next steps.  I totally agree that this is to do with lack of understanding on the part of SLTs (with the exception of a few), pressures from the government which overemphasis 'data' rather than true assessment and  lack of training and understanding of teachers.  Yet this is the one most significant area to help children learn.
Go figure.

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My school doesn't understand assessments

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My school doesn't understand assessments

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I teach History in a private school and have taught KS3, GCSE, A Level and IB. There has been a move over recent years to increase the centralisation of assessments across year groups.

We have end of year exams - which I would expect. I have spent time this year re-writing the KS3 SOW, lesson materials and assessments to better reflect Historical learning.

However, last year and this year we are doing an "exam week" for every year group from Year 8 upwards in the same weeks in Autumn, Spring and Summer terms. Not only that but arbitrarily students who hit certain grades (say, 5 downwards) are deemed to have failed and then need additional interventions.

Class teachers are doing less formative assessment to help students learn (an essential part of the learning process). Student grading is not valid as an assessment in Week 7 of the Autumn term cannot provide evidence of a final grade at the end of a 2 year course. For SLT, a grade 5 in a modern language in week 7 of the first term of GCSE is a fail, although this grade is to be expected with students who are not fluent in a language and for whom the assessment is on material they do not know well.

A knowledge of assessment theory is vital - for the class teacher, the HOD or the member of SLT who is driving this ridiculous system. Schools want better outcomes for students and want to know who is not performing well and who is doing excellently, but data on a spreadsheet is an invalid metric when the construct is not valid and when the grading is arbitrary.

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In my Junior School setting, we use comparative judgement in English and weekly mental arithmetic tests as part of our regular diet. We also used the New Group Reading Test for the first time this term. The majority of these assessments are mandated by our head of assessment so little thought by the humble class teacher has to be given to validity, reliability etc at least in choosing to administer the assessment. As Alex Quigley mentioned, this is an area I believe teachers are inexperienced and undertrained in. However, in my role as a head of subject, often with very bespoke topics, I do have responsibility for designing assessments and I am sure this course will help me understand the intricacies and pitfalls as I look to educate myself further.

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I do think the way we use summative assessments in my school needs careful revision. I don’t think they are always administered in the same way. I think some of our assessments are too open to teacher bias. We have been trying to moderate a bit more. We also use foundation subject assessments to make claims that aren’t actually accurate. For example, subject leaders are encouraged to draw conclusions about the progress of boys against girls. I don’t think the assessments are reliable enough to make these claims however.
I think our formative assessments are more useful and based on everyday teaching. Teachers do need to understand the difference between performance and learning though. This is something I am working to develop at my school.

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Reading this small amount of introduction to theories of test has made me consider how undertrained we are in this area. After 11 years in teaching, I can identify with problems of contruct underrepresentation, inter and intra-rater reliability, validity, etc etc, but just didn't know they were called these things!
A test we did for year 11 at the start of last year springs to mind as being particularly poor in its design. It was only 15 marks long, and the choice of questions didn't make it valid in showing what students could do or what gaps they had in their knowledge.
It's interesting to bear some of the questions in the Rob Coe article in mind when I'm next looking through end of topic tests.

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I teach KS3-KS5 Spanish. I have begun to re design my assessments and start to use formative assessments more. I do believe I still have a long way to go to ensuring all of these assessments are practical and enable pupils to achieve the best outcomes. I think it is important to get pupils used to different assessment styles particularly for the journey to GCSE but we can sometimes be too restricted by this. I am beginning to encourage my pupils to have fun with learning a language as well as, focusing on interleaving and retrieval. I still use end of unit assessments but just on two skills at a time and i try to embed previous learning into these too.

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I teach KS3, GCSE and A Level History. We use formative assessment every lesson now, in the form of retrieval quizzes. I also use longer subject knowledge tests which are re-visited throughout the year. We also use summative end of topic assessments across all year groups. Finally, we hold an exam week for KS3 at the end of the year and hold mock exams for Year 10, 11, 12 and 13 annually.

I think it is crucial that teachers have an understanding of assessment theory although I can appreciate why this does not often happen. It was interesting to read that there were no teachers enrolled onto Professor Rob Coe's Masters programme in assessment. I am guessing this is due to lack of time. Alex Quigley's blog also made the point of teachers being thrown into the abyss of teaching after their PGCE and not receiving training on assessment thereafter. This is certainly my experience. I recognise the importance of having an understanding of assessment so that assessments are relevant and valuable but feel that teacher knowledge on this subject is limited.

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Redesigning KS3 Summative Assessment as part of a curriculum review.

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Redesigning KS3 Summative Assessment as part of a curriculum review.

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This year as part of the on-going KS3 curriculum review, two schools (one of them being the one I work at and lead the Languages faculty) have been tasked with redesigning our KS3 assessment in MFL.

The initial proposal I put together was one out of 100 marks, so that scores could be converted into percentages easily. There were to be two papers: 1 on skills (listening, reading, speaking) and 1 on 'knowledge' (multiple choice, grammar, vocabulary).

I put together a draft of my second paper (knowledge paper) for Year 7, as it was to be the 'unknown value' as we regularly test the other skills. Having shared the assessment with our sister school, the response I got was that it would be too easy and the idea was pushed back without real consideration of the exam; even though I had sat down with my line manager, the head of assessment for the school and my Head of Key Stage 3 languages in the consultation process to ensure that the paper would provide us with a spread of data and students understanding of the curriculum.

What I did was I distributed the paper to the whole of Year 8 (who have covered the same content as the current Year7) to see how they faired. Not one student achieved 100% (including 2 native speakers) and we got a range of percentages from 95% down to 30% on the paper, with little bunching of results when ranking the performances. We are going to report performance based on percentiles, so I was quite happy with that. Upon presenting the sister school with the data broken down in a spreadsheet and analysed performance of the Year 8 cohort, the sister school then agreed to the introduction of this paper.

I guess my reflection is that when rolling out assessments, there needs to be a solid trial base with statistics behind them in order to help convince people who would just push back without a sufficient evidence base to justify their case.

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What assessments do you use regularly in your school?
I work as a Business teacher in a private school. I teach GCSE, A Level, BTEC and IB Business. The assessments used include: MCQ, knowledge tests, past exam questions, questioning in class, and in terms of BTEC, which I teach coursework units, we use retrieval practice for key terms and concepts.

Why do you think it is important to have an understanding of assessment theory?
Quite simply because assessments are more likely to be fit for purpose, measured in terms of validity and reliability. It also ensures that teachers, as professionals, develop their professional understanding of a core - no, essential and fundamental - part of their vocation.

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In my school we only teach yr9 to 13. 9 to 11 is all GCSE. Tests occur at the end of each topic (so 5 or 6 per year for GCSE). SLT love all of our data because, as a result of lots of testing, we are much better at providing evidence for predictions than many departments. We also predict GCSE results and A level results well. This was very useful in the last two years where CAGs/TAGs were created. However, I don't think we do enough formative assessment to help guide improvements. I like the idea of more testing with lower stakes, e.g. key terms testing. My son's school give yr7 to 9 a weekly spelling and definition test that covers all subjects, with word / definition lists given out each week (and emailed to parents too). This means that the motivated students know some of the definitions before they get taught them in class!

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We use end of topic/mid-topic tests written in house across all 3 sciences.
KS3 will sit 10 end of topic tests in Yr 7 & 8 and an end of year exam.
KS4 tests depends on the year and subject, and we break larger topics down into smaller units to test.
Mock exams are past papers.

As a department we recently re-wrote our end of topic assessments to add in a synoptic question on a previous topic, I got asked to re-write the KS3 Biology assessments.

I knew what I felt was wrong with previous in-house written assessments - in one test of around 35 marks, at least 12 marks over 4 questions were based on knowledge of only one concept, in a topic with another other key concepts that wasn't covered at all (lacked validity).  A final question was included on an application of the knowledge which was poorly worded for what the very prescriptive mark scheme wanted and was not key to their growing understanding in the subject at that stage. There were two long written questions at the end of the test.  Many students attempted neither and the whole thing wasn't really a reflection of their understanding of that topic (of low value and unclear purpose).

However, I wasn't sure what to do to make a good one.  Which is why its important to understand assessment theory.  Schools don't always have the money to buy in assessments, and with the goal posts always changing it'd be expensive.  So if teachers are to write them they need to know how to make them worthwhile for the students and teachers.

Humble brag - my Head of Subject was very pleased with the assessments I wrote to replace the one described above.  It had a clear purpose and validity (assess all key content, both core concepts) and it was more accessible (the useful longer answer question came sooner in the paper, after some other multiple choice questions so students weren't worn out and gave the question a go). It may not be the best it could be but it was an improvement and I'm very chuffed!