Alison Gilmore

Each year, the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) engages teachers to work intensively with children administering a wide range of assessment tasks, and to mark children’s recorded performances. It has been found that teachers benefit enormously professionally and personally from these experiences, taking away many valuable insights about teaching, the curriculum and assessment practices. Five teachers talk about what they have gained from being involved as a NEMP administrator or marker, and what lessons they have implemented in their classroom or school.

A group of teachers examined over 400 assessment tasks in the NEMP probe study reports from 1995 to 2000. From mapping each task onto the curriculum, the teachers were able to identify 23 tasks which were particularly innovative, exciting, easy to implement, and excellent models of the wide range of NEMP tasks available. The resulting Teachers’ Choice of NEMP Tasks is a kit of assessment resources for teachers to use in their classroom.