Assessment tools

Assessment in schools is often concerned with generating student-achievement information in specific learning areas. However, we can use assessment techniques to collect a wider range of information that might reveal important prerequisites for learning or educational outcomes that are important in their own right.

These days we are keen to make the most of our test data, particularly when it comes to informing next steps for teaching and learning. Sometimes we may examine how students have responded to particular questions on a test. This is good practice. It can be very enlightening to see what students found difficult (or easy) within a particular assessment and to think about the responses they made. It is also always important to know what was actually tested and how this matches our learning intentions. However, we must take care when dealing with responses to single questions.

The Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) have been available to teachers since the 1990s. Since then our understanding of assessment has broadened, and the focus today is much more on the ARBs as a powerful tool for assessment for formative purposes. Next Steps is intended to help teachers to use the ARBs to support formative assessment in classrooms.

Outline of changes to the ARB website, designed to improve finding relevant and useful resources and their supporting information. 

Outlines components of formative assessment that are supported by the website.