Developing Formative Assessment Lord Williams’s School Thame UK

Lord Williams’s 11-18 Comprehensive school 2100 students Split-site 140 teachers Small town and surrounding villages Committed to development of teaching and learning

How we got started King’s College project (1999) 4 teachers join research project Whole school launch - September 2000 Gradual spreading of formative practices Core group expanded

Key events Introduction of Formative assessment as whole school focus for Performance Management Commitment to AfL as a focus for curriculum development Review of School Assessment Policy

More Key events Focus Performance Management on different aspects of AfL in successive years ‘Learning to Learn’ group established Joint training day with ‘partner’ primary schools Whole staff meeting to celebrate AfL practice

Conditions for lasting change Commitment and enthusiasm of School Senior Managers Support for peer observation Meetings focus on learning not admin. Teachers encouraged to ‘mark’ less and ‘assess’ better Development of comment banks

Lasting change Communication of good practice Sharing of resources AfL approaches and tasks written into Schemes of Work Communication with parents Keep Formative Assessment on the school agenda

Challenges Consistency across large teaching body Reluctance to change Need for internal summative events External high stakes summative assessment looms Self-assessment is hard! How do we capture and keep it?

Where next? Response to primary practice Archive of peer and self-assessment strategies Video leading practitioners in action Introduce student self-assessment as focus for Performance Management Research formative-summative relationship