CMTP: Changes in Mathematics Teaching Project

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Purposes and effects of assessment in year 7 and 8: summary

None of the departments used standard tests in each year without questioning their purpose: what is it that is being tested and what is it that students find challenging and what is it they would like to test. What we wish to convey here is the quality of discussion.

In all schools:

• there were some conflicts between wanting to test what had been taught to see what had been understood, and wanting to know an NC level for accountability purposes, so using a standard test
• discussions about testing were characterised by teachers' willingness to think about how the range of tasks offered in class related to the range of questions (which were not normally one-stage procedural questions), and whether they had made this relationship explicit or not.
• teachers related test performance to teaching methods rather than the content covered.
• use of self-assessment and peer-assessment increased during the project.
• all schools claimed to use comment-only marking, which was time consuming and challenging, but many reported that some students wanted ticks and structured work. We saw many instances of teachers using ticks.
• by the end of the project, all departments agreed to work with students on how to prepare and what to do in tests rather than reteaching content
• they focused on what students needed to be aware of and skilled in to do non-procedural questions
• in LS we were privileged to attend a very good discussion about the nature of test questions and the implications for teaching so that students can tackle unfamiliar and multi-stage tasks

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