At the Schools and Academies Show 2024 at the NEC, Chief Regulator for Ofqual, Sir Ian Bauckham CBE, led a discussion on the main stage titled ‘What’s Next for Assessment?’.
This talk focussed on the future of assessment and what this means for schools, and Ofqual’s priorities as we advance into a more digitised world.
The challenge faced by Ofqual and examining bodies in the UK is how to make the marking of seventeen million scripts fairer, more efficient, and more accurate. Currently, this task is undertaken by an army of 73,000 markers each summer, and although the system is working, Ofqual wants to develop innovative approaches that streamline this process. Part of this is the move towards digitisation in assessments.
During the discussion, Sir Ian Bauckham wanted to reiterate the continued importance of assessments and qualifications in the modern world.
Describing qualifications as a form of ‘currency’ for students, he described how qualifications are an ‘external verification of learning and knowledge’, whether they’re occupational qualifications for recognition in a job, vocational qualifications to secure work or educational qualifications to move on the next stage of education.
For qualifications to continue to have this weight in society, well-developed teaching needs to continue to make education accessible. Curriculum is the first step to creating a recognised qualification, with new qualifications following an anticipatory design to teach knowledge and skills that do not only pass an exam, but become useful to learners later in life.
There are both advantages and disadvantages of moving towards digitisation in assessment. Sir Ian Bauckham talked at length about the challenges that Ofqual face when implementing digital assessments:
We are beginning to see digitisation in learning, but this is not universal yet. The scheme needs enormous financial investment to ensure every school, and every child, gets the same access to digital learning.
There is a digital divide in the country, with children from poorer economic backgrounds having less access to digital devices. Ofqual are keen to ensure assessments do not unwittingly build disadvantages for certain children with digitisation.
Although a shift to digital is inevitable in teaching and assessment, Sir Ian Bauckham made one thing emphatically clear: “Everything digital won’t be happening”.
A familiar topic across most presentations and speaking engagements at the Schools and Academies Show 2024 was how AI is going to affect education in the future, for better or worse.
Speaking on this, Sir Ian Bauckham outlined what Ofqual’s stance was on AI in assessment and teaching:
One of the issues examining bodies face is the marking of seventeen million scripts every summer. With such a large amount of data being looked at by 73,000 different people, human error is bound to creep in, but Ofqual does currently monitor this and errors in marking are taken very seriously, with exam boards reprimanded and encouraged to improve when this does happen.
To make this already robust system stronger, there will be a move towards making all exam scripts available online, free of charge. This will allow students and teachers to look at scripts together and decided whether they want to apply for a marking review.
Ofqual is keen to move towards digitisation in assessment but want to do so in a cautious and fair manner. It will be interesting to see soon what measures will be implemented to help streamline the examination and marking processes, and whether AI will have a role to play.
