2 Impact on Learning Practices

The paper argues that assessment practices for qualifications will impact on teaching programmes. (These effects are not seen as `dire', but the absence of discussion is seen as disingenuous.)

While the discussion is absent from the written materials there has been consideration of the degree of backwash effect from the qualifications specification to the teaching and learning strategies used by teachers and students. This issue is not confined to this specific policy, but must be taken into consideration in any policy relating to curriculum or assessment.

Initiatives to ensure that such effects are positive, rather than negative, have been developed. For example assessment exemplars demonstrate different approaches to assessment, appropriate to curriculum outcomes. Extensive professional development will ensure that teachers do not narrow the scope of teaching programmes to a level that destroys the integrity of the study or so extracts it from the real world that what is being assessed becomes meaningless.

Making the standards explicit will not in itself lead to raising standards. The paper advises not to take the position of over-definition and over precision of the standard per se, but rather to provide exemplar materials.

This reinforces the approach adopted for developing both the standards and the exemplars. Assessment activities for the internally assessed standards have been developed and form the basis of the professional development programmes being conducted in preparation for 2002. These assessment activities include, where applicable, examples of student responses annotated to show how the assessment judgement has been made. This element of the project links with the wider Exemplar project, which is one element of the National Assessment Strategy. Exemplar materials are also being developed for the externally assessed standards.