Assessment should play a central role in driving learning in the education system. When used effectively, it should inform teachers about what they need to teach next, as well as what they need to learn next themselves in order to teach better. Currently, student assessment is rarely used to inform learning across the system in New Zealand, which has resulted in an education system that is essentially top-down and autocratic rather than one that learns and improves. In a webinar, Michael Absolum explores these issues and how conceptualising assessment as supporting a learning system allows us to rethink the nature and purpose of the types of assessment being used in schools, from ‘of the moment’ to more formal, standardised assessment such as e-asTTle and PAT and notions of validity and reliability.

Here are some of the key ideas explored during the webinar:

A system that learns is essentially a system that gets better and better. In this kind of system, students learn, but learning should also happen at all other levels of the system: teachers, leaders, communities of learning, Ministry of Education staff and officials, and the secretary and minister of education, should also be constantly learning.

Young people today seem not to know the purpose of schooling, and there seems to be much less clarity today than there has been in the past about what children are at school to learn and why. A clear curriculum is needed in order to engage students to see that there is a positive, inclusive, embracing pathway for them into adult society, where, in turn, there is a role for them to play. Students will be unable to be agentic learners if they do not recognise or understand the value of schooling.

Assessment is simply finding out what students know. Currently, the tendency is to complete a unit of teaching and learning by assessing what students have learned, but actually assessment should also be the starting point. Teachers should begin by finding out what students already know and can do in a given area or on a given topic, and this can be a conversation rather than a pen and paper test. There also needs to be a discussion about why students need to learn more than they already know. Good assessment is primarily for the learner, and it is important for the student to have a sense of the purpose of that assessment: what do I know now, what I do I need to know later, and what are the steps to achieving that? Summative approaches that assess at the end of teaching and learning, and happen to the learner rather than with the learner, tend to make students passive and lacking in agency, which is demotivating.

Arguments that assessment data can be ignored because there is no assessment tool that tells teachers everything they need to know about students’ ability are fallacious. One of the best sources of assessment data is the students themselves, but this requires teachers to create a classroom in which students are knowledgeable and agentic about their own learning.

There needs to be a flow of useful data about what is and is not working throughout the whole system. This involves developing progression-based assessment instruments that are educative and that enable student, teacher, and school agency right through the system.The expertise to design these instruments exists within the system, but it is essential that there is also buy-in and engagement from teachers and schools. This also requires all teachers and leaders are data literate.

Leaders play a vital role in advocating for the value of assessment and for the need for teachers to constantly improve their practice in order to improve student outcomes. Local and national assessment data combined with the teacher professional standards form a compelling basis for discussions about the professional responsibility of all teachers to change and adapt in order to achieve better outcomes for students. Leaders also need to work with staff and provide the appropriate professional learning they need to identify issues and develop and trial solutions. One of the best approaches that teachers and leaders can take is to work collaboratively within and across schools to try and solve problems of practice.