What does effective assessment at KS3 look like in History?

A year or so ago, as subject lead I carried out a review of literature around assessment in History with a view to improving our approach. I meant to blog it back then but better late than never.

Keep:
● Assessments centred on the enquiry question.
● Assessment measures should be rooted in a specific task with task-specific mark schemes.
● Understanding of substantive concepts (definitions of key terms)
● Assess the key ingredients: use of substantive knowledge/use of second-order
concepts/communication of their understanding.
● MCQs – well designed they are excellent at isolating understanding and easy to mark.

Introduce or improve:
● The assessment must be aimed to help pupils, teachers and parents to know and understand
what their mark means and what needs to be done to progress.
● Precise, diagnostic formative feedback based upon task-specific mark schemes. These should be
used to assess the development of students’ substantive knowledge and their capacity to deploy
it effectively. Are they thinking historically?
● End of enquiry outcome tasks and shorter knowledge-based tests.
● Construction of timelines from memory.
● Evaluate the use of knowledge – selection and deployment of knowledge.
● Store copies of students’ work as exemplars to show and demonstrate their progress.
● Final outcomes become more analytically demanding over time.
● Reflect as a team on mark schemes after the assessments have been sat and marked to make
changes for next time.
● Agree on and identify what we want pupils to learn.
● Agree on what ‘residue knowledge’ we want students to have for each period they study in each
year.
● Guide students not by ‘marks available’ but by ‘time they should spend on it’
● Include extended writing on a piece of reading at the end (this should not be testing memory).
The product should be a demonstration of the student’s historical thinking.
● Questions should be broad enough to relate clearly to the focus of the enquiry and require little
or no specific preparation to answer.
● Use an electronic format for the test; allows the marking to take place instantly for much of the
test and automatically stores responses for creating model answers/charting student
progression.
● MCQs focused on responding to known misconceptions (refer to WCF)
● Provide a mixed constitution. Include both isolations of specific knowledge and integration with
other aspects. These should reflect the overall enquiry question.
● Introduce comparative judgment when marking.
● Year 8 and 9 to include questions on materials studied in the previous year(s)

Bin/Avoid:
● Frontloading success criteria – leads to dampening enthusiasm and turning assessment into a tick
box exercise.
● Sharing the detailed mark schemes with students. The markscheme is to aid the teacher and
guide their feedback.
● The task-specific mark scheme should not be linked to a ‘flagging’ system of underachieving
students. Teacher judgment is most important rather than relating to a generic hierarchy.
● Generic, linear models of progression.
● Use of GCSE question types and mark schemes.
● Use a single taxonomy e.g. Blooms as a structure for assessment.
● Use of numbers or grades rather than descriptions. ‘Not everything that can be counted counts,
not everything that counts can be counted.’
● Testing the teachers rather than the student – if a class has not covered content due to illness,
etc it should not be in the assessment.
● Telling the students in advance that a test is taking place (Stanford). This is primarily aimed at
younger students but has the advantage of reducing stress and the advantages of students from
family backgrounds supportive of revision at home. [One to discuss!]
● Isolating a skill unconnected to content. As Didau explains: ‘You can’t teach skill, you can only
teach knowledge. Knowledge turns into skill through practice. This means we have to think
carefully about how to break down what we see as ‘skills’ into teachable components of
knowledge which can then be recombined through practise as skill.’
● Teaching to the test – this has been proven to undermine student progress.