Assessment standards: a manifesto for change. (original) (raw)

Assessment standards lie at the heart of the assessment process underpinning assessment strategy, design and marking. For students, assessment standards provide guidance for their learning and allow them to monitor their progress, and ultimately, the standards will be used to judge their performance. Yet there has been little serious consideration of the nature of assessment standards or their effective communication between stakeholders (primarily staff and students but also employers, professional bodies and government). However, amid accusations from the media concerning ‘dumbing down,’ there have been wider concerns expressed about assessment and assessment standards, not least in the Burgess Report, which identified a range of problems, including marking reliability and communication of assessment standards. In response to these concerns the Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe), a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, brought together an international forum of experts on assessment in higher education (the Weston Manor Group) to consider issues around assessment standards and make proposals about changes to policy and practice. Members of the group (Appendix 1) were invited to participate based on their research and publication on assessment issues. The Group is clear that learners who engage in assessment are entitled to fair and transparent assessment practices and standards. However, it is the Group’s view that assessment standards reside in the practices of academic and professional communities and in the nature and level of the tasks in which learners engage, rather than being fully describable in statements of learning outcomes or marking criteria. In addition, the Group believes that currently there is an over-emphasis on the measurement of learning, often at the expense of assessment for learning. These fundamental evidence-based beliefs underpin a Manifesto for Change which the Group is putting forward with a view to stimulating debate across the sector and, more importantly, as a step towards bringing about necessary changes in policy and practice. The rationale and evidence for the tenets of the manifesto are presented in this paper.