Developing assessment

Assessment has always been at the heart of teaching and learning. The main educational purpose of assessment is to help young people to make progress through history. By monitoring and assessing different aspects of the pupils' learning, teachers build up knowledge of individual pupil's strengths and weaknesses in history. This information helps teachers to plan the next steps in teaching and learning.

Assessment should not be seen as a one-way process, with teachers or examiners being the assessors and the pupils as passive recipients of judgements about their attainment in history. Assessment information should help both teachers and learners to understand learning that takes place through history and to plan for future learning.

A distinction is often made between the formative and summative purposes of assessment.

Because formative assessment supports teaching and learning by providing feedback to learners and teachers, it is often referred to as 'assessment for learning'. It is undertaken by both teachers and learners and becomes formative when it is used to plan the next steps in learning to meet their needs.

Assessment of learning has the mainly summative purpose of summarising the points that pupils have reached in their learning. In the medium and longer term, this helps us to make judgements about standards of achievement in history.

Teachers can involve the pupils in summative assessment to increase their understanding of the standards they are aiming for and to improve the quality of target setting.

Find out more about assessment by choosing a key stage from the menu.