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Step 4
Defining the purpose(s) of your assessment will help you make the processes of what you are doing transparent to all those affected by them.
The purpose of assessment
You now need to consider the purpose of each of the assessments that you intend to carry out. Assessments can be put to many uses. However, it is important to be specific about the purpose(s) of the assessment before the learner embarks on the process. That way the process is kept open and transparent. It is also important not to give the assessment too many purposes, for if there are too many linked to one assessment, we could be accused of having an assessment that is not "fit for purpose."
For more information on the purpose and the principles of assessment go to: First Steps in Assessment
Some common purposes
It is helpful to remember the following:
Assessment has four main purposes:
- helping teachers, lecturers or trainers and learners decide what to do next to meet a learning goal (or choose a new one)
- providing information that teachers, lecturers or trainers can use to improve their teaching in some way
- helping learners understand their strengths and weaknesses and benchmark their progress
- making formal records of learners' achievement at a specific point. These records may be based on in-school assessments or national test and exam results. They are used to:
- monitor pupil or learner progress against national norms and school or institution targets (This is increasingly important to demonstrate that learners are improving during the year.)
- decide on class groupings and sets (eg for pupils moving from Year 5 to Year 6)
- guide access to future stages of education or employment (eg via GCSE or A Level requirements).
Extending the audit
You now need to add a purpose to each of the assessments you intend to carry out over an academic year. It may be helpful to do this as separate departments or subject teams and add a purpose column to the initial audit that you have carried out. As in the example below:
| Month and date | Type of assessment | Purpose of the assessment | Organised by | Outcomes recorded by | Information sent to and used by |
| Sept | |||||
| Week 1 | |||||
| Week 2 | Summative | Make a formal record of learners baseline data and add to the NCT scores | NFER/CAT | Assessment Co-ordinator | HOD/HOY & subject staff for adding to baseline data & used for target setting |
| Week 3 | |||||
| Week 4 | |||||
| Oct | |||||
| Week 1 | Formative | Provide information that teachers can use to improve their teaching & provide information to help learners understand their strengths and weaknesses | Internal | Subject staff, learners and peers | Form Tutor |
You now must collate this into a single spreadsheet for the Assessment co-ordinator to use.