Reflections from Mary Myatt
A note from Victoria Merrick:
We were honoured and delighted to have the curriculum conversation guru herself, Mary Myatt with us at Merrick-Ed’s inaugural Reimagining Assessment: Brining Equity to All Curriculum Areas symposium in November 2024.
Here’s what she had to say the next day…
“While it’s important that we know how our pupils and students are getting on for several reasons:
- As a matter of entitlement – have our pupils encountered and engaged in the lovely content and great ideas?
- To check whether there are any gaps in their exposure to, engagement with and learning of the curriculum
- To provide information to leaders, including governors and trustees about how pupils are getting on
- To celebrate what young people have achieved!
One of the challenges in gathering this information is that there are no national benchmarks or exemplars for standards in the foundation subjects in primary, or for that matter in secondary before the public examinations at the end of Key Stage 4.
It’s both challenging and super interesting!
And so I was delighted to have the chance to join Victoria Merrick and Merrick-Ed’s first symposium on ‘Reimagining Assessment: Bringing Equity to All Curriculum Areas’ along with over 100 curriculum and assessment leaders.
I attend a number of conferences, most of which are either very good or excellent in sharing new perspectives and ideas. This one on assessment was one of the best I have attended. Absolutely no quick fixes, just an absolute focus on sharing what’s working, being honest about the ongoing work that needs to be done and a collective endeavour to learn from one another.
Some headlines I’ve taken away for further reflection:
Valerie Singer’s observations on supporting students from around the world to have access to great curriculum opportunities at British universities.
Alice Whitby urging us to reframe assessment in terms of lines of enquiry rather than hypotheses. She also pointed out that as a sector we’re pretty strong on ‘formative intention’ and less on ‘formative action’. In addition, that we’ve spent too much time focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and scant attention paid to the ‘why’.
Dr Simon Child walked us through the elements of ‘Assessment Literacy’ and one of his insights rang very true: that approaches to assessment affect self-identity – in my view we need far more discussion about this. It’s nuanced and important.
Daniel Emmerson from Good Future Foundation shared the sensible and sensitive work they are doing in to equip educators prepare students to benefit from and succeed in an AI-forward future. Also good to see they have AI Quality Mark for schools.
I’ve been interested in comparative judgement for a long time and I believe it holds tremendous promise. So I was delighted to hear from the team at the Dance Adjudication Network who spoke about the comparative judgement they had developed being used at the Paris Olympics. Utterly fascinating and compelling in equal measure.
Finally, three absolutely marvellous sessions from Dale Bassett (United Learning), Amie Barr (Ark) and Peter Davies(E-ACT) sharing their thinking, processes and evaluations of creating assessment instruments and analysis. All offered with professional honesty and humility.
The symposium was topped and tailed by a tremendous call to arms from Victoria to get assessment trending again.. not in a dour, miserable way but one that speaks to improving outcomes for all our young people.”
Reflections from Mary Myatt
A note from Victoria Merrick:
We were honoured and delighted to have the curriculum conversation guru herself, Mary Myatt with us at Merrick-Ed’s inaugural Reimagining Assessment: Brining Equity to All Curriculum Areas symposium in November 2024.
Here’s what she had to say the next day…
“While it’s important that we know how our pupils and students are getting on for several reasons:
- As a matter of entitlement – have our pupils encountered and engaged in the lovely content and great ideas?
- To check whether there are any gaps in their exposure to, engagement with and learning of the curriculum
- To provide information to leaders, including governors and trustees about how pupils are getting on
- To celebrate what young people have achieved!
One of the challenges in gathering this information is that there are no national benchmarks or exemplars for standards in the foundation subjects in primary, or for that matter in secondary before the public examinations at the end of Key Stage 4.
It’s both challenging and super interesting!
And so I was delighted to have the chance to join Victoria Merrick and Merrick-Ed’s first symposium on ‘Reimagining Assessment: Bringing Equity to All Curriculum Areas’ along with over 100 curriculum and assessment leaders.
I attend a number of conferences, most of which are either very good or excellent in sharing new perspectives and ideas. This one on assessment was one of the best I have attended. Absolutely no quick fixes, just an absolute focus on sharing what’s working, being honest about the ongoing work that needs to be done and a collective endeavour to learn from one another.
Some headlines I’ve taken away for further reflection:
Valerie Singer’s observations on supporting students from around the world to have access to great curriculum opportunities at British universities.
Alice Whitby urging us to reframe assessment in terms of lines of enquiry rather than hypotheses. She also pointed out that as a sector we’re pretty strong on ‘formative intention’ and less on ‘formative action’. In addition, that we’ve spent too much time focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and scant attention paid to the ‘why’.
Dr Simon Child walked us through the elements of ‘Assessment Literacy’ and one of his insights rang very true: that approaches to assessment affect self-identity – in my view we need far more discussion about this. It’s nuanced and important.
Daniel Emmerson from Good Future Foundation shared the sensible and sensitive work they are doing in to equip educators prepare students to benefit from and succeed in an AI-forward future. Also good to see they have AI Quality Mark for schools.
I’ve been interested in comparative judgement for a long time and I believe it holds tremendous promise. So I was delighted to hear from the team at the Dance Adjudication Network who spoke about the comparative judgement they had developed being used at the Paris Olympics. Utterly fascinating and compelling in equal measure.
Finally, three absolutely marvellous sessions from Dale Bassett (United Learning), Amie Barr (Ark) and Peter Davies(E-ACT) sharing their thinking, processes and evaluations of creating assessment instruments and analysis. All offered with professional honesty and humility.
The symposium was topped and tailed by a tremendous call to arms from Victoria to get assessment trending again.. not in a dour, miserable way but one that speaks to improving outcomes for all our young people.”
Mary Myatt
