Can't we do better than exams?

Yesterday, shortly after offering my customary congratulations to everyone receiving their Level 3 qualification results across England, NI and Wales, I got drawn into a Twitter discussion about the efficacy and fairness of exams versus other forms of assessment. It stemmed from these comments by Gary Neville:

Professor Rachel Lofthouse QT'd her support for Gary's comments, but had received quite an aggressive reply from one teacher complaining that "Coursework [was] less fair, will benefit private school students more [and] will increase teacher workload". Rachel had responded with, "In a world where we can travel into space and create the most beautiful architecture I’m sure we can expend energy and intelligence to resolve the challenges of fairness in assessments"

I then entered the fray:

Bizarrely, the discussion then spilled into whether anyone who wasn't currently teaching in a post-primary school was qualified to comment on alternatives to traditional exam-based assessment. Rachel was denounced for having "ducked out" to become a "university educationalist".

Thankfully there were plenty more measured and constructive contributions, with many settling on the theme that it should be possible to move beyond a false dichotomy between paper-based exams focused largely on recall and 'coursework' as it was envisaged when GCSEs were first devised nearly four decades ago. I've often remarked that people's perceptions of what good practice in education should look like are shaped by their own experiences - ack sure we're all experts because we went to school!

Having previously worked for a UK-based awarding organisation (albeit one that largely doesn't offer General Qualifications), I'm well aware of the pressures and constraints in which they operate, as well as the extent to which they have to tip-toe around the whims of policymakers. They're conditioned to be risk-averse, unimaginative, ever fearful of ending up on the front page of the Daily Mail or being hauled in front of the Education Select Committee. And rightly so - no one should be playing fast and loose with people's futures, no one should should let short-term commercial expediency trump the interests of learners and those who rely on the credibility of assessment outcomes!

I had hoped that the pandemic might provide a pretext for some more innovative and imaginative thinking - especially as in a number of areas it had demonstrated how quickly different approaches can be adopted when there's a pressing need. But sadly, it's difficult to see how awarding organisations and regulators might gain the confidence to think outside the box. More's the pity.