The Department for Education (DfE) has announced the names of the members of the commission on assessment without levels.
School reform minister Nick Gibb last month announced the teacher-led commission and said it would highlight best practice models to help schools develop their own assessment systems.
It came in response to a consultation in which respondents said they were confused by the draft performance descriptors.
Ofsted and Ofqual will also have representatives on the commission. The group will meet for the first time tomorrow.
Those on the commission are:
– Chair – John McIntosh CBE – former headmaster of the London Oratory School, member of the Health Education Council, the National Curriculum Council, the Teachers’ Standards Review, the Teaching Agency advisory group and the National College for School Leadership advisory board. Sits on free schools interview panels.
– Shahed Ahmed OBE – Headteacher at Elmhurst Primary School and a national leader of education. Involved in the development of the phonics screening check and was on the DfE advisory group for the new national curriculum
– Daisy Christodoulou – Research and development manager at charity Ark, former secondary school English teacher. Author of ‘Seven myths about education’.
– Professor Robert Coe – Professor at the School of Education at Durham University and director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM)
– Sam Freedman – Director of research, evaluation and impact at Teach First. Former senior policy adviser for schools at DfE between 2010 and 2013
– Mark Neild – Acting headteacher at Norwich’s Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form. He advised the government on the development of the new maths curriculum.
– Natalie Packer – Independent special educational needs (SEN) consultant and an associate consultant to NASEN. Adviser to Achievement for All during its pilot. Author of ‘The perfect SENCO’.
– Dame Alison Peacock – Executive headteacher of The Wroxham Teaching School. She was also a member of the NAHT commission for primary assessment set up to consider and develop principles for good assessment for schools to use once levels were removed. Co-author of ‘Creating learning without limits’.
I assume the new commission will be making recommendations.
Perhaps the first recommendation could be NOT to scrap a system that all schools had to use, BEFORE a new system has been devised. The new system will be announced more than a year after the old system was scrapped. Then there are the problems of fitting the new system into each school’s processes and training teachers and communicating the new system with parents, creating new school software to manage everything, new reporting software etc etc.
It makes me wonder how anyone who has run a school could have created this mess. Well of course the mess was created by people who have never run a school (or probably any organisation). Perhaps that could be recommendation number 2 from the commission i.e. involve more practitioners (teachers) in strategic education decision making. Not a good start that the commission has no grass roots teachers within its membership, so the chances of them making either of these recommendations is nil.
Recommendation number 3 could be to name and shame the person(s) who actually created this mess. Imagine the opportunity cost of 500,000 teachers having to spend hours on creating an interim system that will last for a year and then be scrapped. I guess these 500.000 teachers are just part of a “blob” so wasting their time is of little consequence.
So where are the teachers? Where are the Primary Teachers?
It’s not like we have a shortage!
Just looks like the usual suspects and a few self appointed edu shouty voices.