A Graduate School of Education seminar

Tim Oates CBE, Group Director of Assessment and Development, Cambridge Assessment, will be talking at the seminar to discuss Why should we care about what children think? Using assessment gain insights into the mental life of children at the University of Exeter.

In this seminar, Tim will be discussing the purpose of assessment and will cover issues of granularity, analysis and precision in assessment. It will draw on international comparative analysis of approaches to assessment as well as experimental work on radical new models in England.

Tim recorded a video for the Department of Education in England in 2014 where he discussed the purpose of changes to assessment in England’s new National Curriculum and the rationale behind moving away from 'levels'. He had also recently appeared before the UK Parliament’s Education Commons Select Committee to give evidence to an inquiry into primary assessment in England and discussed the removal of ‘levels’ in primary education which was introduced in England last year.

You can read Tim’s blog Who’s the most tested one of all? where he talks about how people perceive England to be the most assessed school system in the world and how we can learn from other countries to better understand the system we have.

For more information, visit the University of Exeter's website.