As an American educator living in London for the past five years, I read the Labour government's 2024 white paper with great interest. We don't have anything comparable in the US at a national scale, and the curriculum review (completed in just one year) struck me as a remarkable example of community-based policy design.
Did the recommendations go far enough? Not in my view. But I also appreciated the British instinct for "evolution not revolution." I am, after all, American – revolution is something of a default setting for most of us.
Yet what I've witnessed since 2024, in schools across the UK, the US, and around the world, has left me with a stark conclusion: this evolution is no longer ours to control. Ready or not, the revolution has already arrived in the form of AI. We cannot set the pace of this technology. We cannot negotiate a gentler timeline. AI is, by its nature, disruptive. It will not grant us the luxury of gradual change.
For school systems, this technology is highlighting just how archaic the current structure of GCSEs and A Levels is in the UK. The previous government had suggested scrapping these antiquated exams and the logistics needed to support them for a more comprehensive and streamlined Advanced British Standard exam. That would’ve been a good first step to making an exam system more agile; however, even that shift alone will not be enough to keep pace with AI’s impact on education.
At Transcend, we have helped hundreds of schools and districts in the US design
and implement new learning models that maximize achievement and improve student experiences. Through this work, we have observed how current assessment systems both support and constrain educational improvement, and particularly how they inhibit new models designed to create the kinds of customized, relevant, and rigorous learning experiences that research shows are necessary for learning.
I believe the question facing the UK right now, and all educational systems, is existential. If AI forces us to rethink the very knowledge and skills students need, as well as the classroom learning experience, how do we design a new assessment system which still provides transparency, accountability, and fairness?
Some of the answer lies in the ability of AI itself. While it is still new, AI holds genuine promise for assessment in its ability to unlock real-time formative assessment through a variety of modalities whether video, audio, written. Students, families, and educators could begin to experience assessment not as a high-stakes event but as something woven into the fabric of each day, with a consistency and granularity no single teacher could provide alone. Again, this is not yet perfect, but given the pace of development, it is also not hard to imagine this existing within the next school year.
But how do we go about designing such a system? Shifting something as entrenched as GCSEs and A-levels will require an enormous amount of public trust. For many parents, these exams are the system they grew up with and whatever their own experience, most families in the UK regard them as a reliable measure of performance. Therefore, it will require a collective effort across many stakeholders, but the UK has done this before with the curriculum review, setting precedent for the process.
The UK system also wouldn’t need to start from scratch. A future-ready assessment model that could measure real-world application over time already exists. The International Baccalaureate uses performance-based assessments to evaluate complex reasoning and application, Montessori education relies on structured observation to understand student development, and Big Picture Learning schools center portfolio presentations and exhibitions of learning. Many schools utilize competency-based approaches in which students advance when they demonstrate mastery rather than according to an arbitrary calendar. [1]
Historically, these assessment systems are not adopted at scale because of the amount of time and resources, and training they require of educators. But, again, enter AI. This technology can unleash the ability to assess students with a level of precision and at scale that was not before possible, unleashing amazing opportunities to scale a much more nimble and relevant assessment system across an entire country. The very disruption AI causes in education might also make it the solution.
What is undeniable in whatever path the current UK government chooses, is that they (we) will not be able to set or control the pace of evolution. With over 90% of adolescents in the UK already using AI in schools, the revolution has already happened.
What we can do now is react with collective action to redesign a new system of assessment – one that keeps the pillars of transparency, accountability, and fairness, but also is able to measure the actual skills students need to take with them into a rapidly changing and unknown future.
You can read the new report from Transcend here https://transcendeducation.org/a-bridge-to-the-future-of-state-assessment/
[1] Transcend Education. Future of Assessment Report. 2023, https://transcendeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Future-of-Assessment-Report_042726.pdf.
