Curriculum and Assessment Design: A Balancing Act

How can we ensure assessment truly reflects what we value? Alice Whitby, Teacher Development Lead, Oasis Community Learning, explores how shifting pedagogy from exam-focused teaching to learner-centred approaches enables teachers to align their methods—and assessment practices—with their school's mission, fostering genuine understanding of holistic learner development and progress.

Have we lost our way?

Our education system, designed to nurture and inspire, has become entangled in a web of performance metrics and rigid structures. The goalposts of success are fixed on examination outcomes, leaving little room for fostering creativity, critical thinking, or resilience—the very qualities we claim to value most as a society. This mismatch between aspiration and action needs urgent attention.

Reflecting on curriculum and assessment practices, it’s hard to ignore a troubling incoherence. Looking to Cambridge University National Press and Assessment’s guide to ‘curriculum coherence’ we see the three main mechanisms working together below:

It’s clear, I would suggest, that we have become incoherent by design.

  • Curriculum content is often mapped solely to examination requirements.
  • Assessment becomes a tool to report to stakeholders rather than to support learning.
  • Pedagogy is stifled, teacher autonomy erodes, and the pressure grows.

The consequences are stark. Over 40,000 teachers leave the profession annually (32.5% within their first five years), and national student attendance hovers below 90%. We must refocus on what truly matters: fostering meaningful learning environments that equate to happy, well-rounded, life-long learners.

We need to recalibrate, and in this blog I set out four key areas.

  • The role of assessment in developing achievement not merely measuring it
  • Data collection; it’s limitations and the potential of Comparative Judgement
  • The importance of learner-centred approaches and values-led assessment
  • Teacher performance and links to a culture of professional psychological safety.

Students Don’t Learn What We Teach

As a starting point, we must both understand and apply the notion that instruction from teachers is (research tells us) our very best bet for improving learner progress, and assessment is at the heart of that. It is still not a dead cert for student outcomes though.

Curriculum and assessment design must embrace two truths:

  1. Repetition of end-point tasks (e.g., exam drills) doesn’t improve outcomes. Instead, earlier phases of education should build foundational skills and foster critical thinking.
  2. Cognitive development is influenced by environment. Therefore, the learning space must be rich, dynamic, and thought-provoking.

This understanding challenges us to create environments that nurture intellectual curiosity and resilience. A rich learning environment is one where students are exposed to diverse ideas, encouraged to ask questions, and provided opportunities to engage in meaningful collaboration. For example, project-based learning and interdisciplinary approaches can transform classrooms into vibrant hubs of exploration.

Moreover, teachers play a pivotal role in shaping these environments. They must be empowered with professional development opportunities to implement strategies that cater to varied learning needs. This includes fostering a culture of high expectations coupled with support, ensuring that all students can thrive regardless of their starting point.

By embedding these principles into curriculum design, we move closer to a model where intelligence isn’t merely measured, but actively cultivated.

At Key Stage 3 for instance, we should broaden the curriculum to drive curiosity rather than mimic exam formats. Paradoxically, by fostering thought and learner attributes intentionally, exam success becomes more attainable.

We have to ask and keep asking:

  • What does assessment for learning look like in each department and why does it look like that?
  • How can we support you to prepare for summative assessment, and how can we support you so that your summative assessment has formative use?
  • How much training have your Heads of Department and classroom teachers had on the use of assessment? How often? What was the impact?
  • How much non-contact time do your teachers get?

Data Collection: It’s limitations and the potential of Comparative Judgement

To address the challenges I outlined in the introduction, leaders must rethink how data is collected and used:

  • Be transparent about the purpose of data collection. Is it just for reporting to parents and governors? That’s fine, but its validity must also be clear. Data gets old, and quickly.
  • Limit data collection to instances where it genuinely supports learners.
  • Avoid drawing sweeping conclusions from limited evidence; instead, develop nuanced lines of enquiry.

Achieving a Grade 9 or failing to reach a Grade 4 isn’t always about merit but about quotas. And having been lost in the midst of marking a few too many times has convinced me that comparative judgement is the key to improving teacher instruction and needs to become central to our process of assessment in schools. If students are at the centre of our mission, assessment is about the feedback they receive and therefore comparative mechanisms are underutilised. They offer a powerful bridge between formative intention and formative action.

Recently, at Merrick Education’s Reimagining Assessment Symposium, the opportunity to bring equity to all curriculum areas through the use of adaptive comparative judgement was also expertly highlighted. By comparing pieces of work to identify relative quality, teachers can refine their understanding of ‘great’ and bridge the gap more efficiently and cohesively for students. Comparative judgement not only enhances the reliability of assessment but also sharpens instructional strategies. Without refining our approach, we continue to risk turning assessment into a mechanism for evaluating staff instead of fostering student progress. And time spent marking over planning how to close the gap will continue to sink the system.

Towards Learner-Centred Approaches and Values-Led Assessment

To truly centre learners, curriculum content must reflect our mission and assess what we value. Pedagogy must shift from serving exam structures to fostering genuine understanding and facilitate more than just a result in an exam for the learner.

This has very real implications for our teacher education model once qualified. School Leaders should think hard about equipping their teams to answer:

  • What pedagogical choices can I/ should I make to enact our mission statement (not serve an exam)?

Teachers need to understand the why behind their practices, not just the what and how. For instance, why do we use “turn and talks”? When should they be employed? Teacher Education must be deeply intentional, equipping teachers to align methods with mission.

Professional psychological safety in practice

Teachers need to feel safe and school leaders need to preserve psychological safety for teachers. By preserving this we stand a chance of preserving the efficacy of the data and any insights we may draw.

If teachers feel pressure to mask underachievement or believe data collection serves no practical purpose, it undermines the entire process.

Research underscores how even small changes in expectations affect teacher behaviour. In one study referenced by Dylan Wiliam (Assessment for learning: why, what and how? Cambridge Assessment Network talk, 2006), teachers were trained in problem-solving. There were two groups and they received exactly the same session. There was only one difference; the first group was told that they were responsible for students performing to a high standard. The first group exhibited more controlling behaviours, limiting students’ engagement and problem-solving ability—and their students learned less.

Now consider the daily pressures of marking, league tables and inspections. Is it any wonder teachers feel stifled, and students disengage?

And finally, success is a prerequisite to motivation

Learning is an iterative process and success has to occur early in the process if a person is going to ‘stay motivated’. Research in the Science of Learning underscores the interplay between motivation and achievement. Success is not merely the outcome of effort; it’s the spark that fuels it.

It’s time to rethink curriculum and assessment—not to meet minimum standards, but to inspire maximum potential.

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