Before lunch I attended a workshop session on Assessment for the 21st Century...

The workshop led by Dr Sue Horner from QCDA, had sessions by Matt Buxton, from Djanogly City Academy in Nottingham, Lotta Valentin, from Kunskapsskolan in Sweden and Dr Lorna Earl, from Aporia Consulting in Canada. Dr Earl was really good and highlighted some of the flaws in our current assessment systems and the importance of open, transparent evidence based assessment which is fit for purpose and which stands up to independent and expert scrutiny. She stressed that any assessment tool should be designed for the assessment of the thing you are measuring... a student, a school, an authority... and the problems of using single indicators to measure the effectiveness of the lot. She also pointed out that unless the assessments stand up to independent and rigorous scrutiny of the evidence they were meaningless.

Sadly, our friends at OFSTED weren't here and weren't listening.
Chris