Case Study: Whole-school assessment practice at Tanglin Trust
Creating a consistent and common professional dialogue around assessment is crucial in developing whole-school assessment practice. Claire Russell, Assistant Headteacher at Tanglin Trust’s Senior School, is currently leading an initiative in her school to enhance classroom assessment practice. In this blog, Claire tells us why Tanglin Trust opted for our Assessment Essentials unlimited licence and how the course is supporting their assessment initiative.
Tanglin Trust School, in Singapore, is the oldest British international school in South-East Asia. Tanglin Trust caters for students aged 3-18 and has a long tradition of providing British-based learning with an international perspective. Speaking with Claire, we asked…
Why did you choose the Assessment Essentials unlimited licence for your school?
“On the recommendation of a colleague in another local school, we trialled Assessment Essentials with a small cohort of interested staff in the senior school in 2018-19. As the course progressed and the discussion about assessment amongst these staff grew, we realised we were onto something which could really transform our classroom practice. This group of teachers became our advocates for the benefits of the course, and gradually the word grew. Each term since then, we have had another group of teachers eager to sign up, and so it became clear that this was a course that spoke for itself – the benefits were obvious to all and so we no longer had to sell it. When we found out that we could buy the unlimited licence, we leapt at the chance!”
How have your colleagues at Tanglin Trust responded to the online course?
“Assessment Essentials is now well-known and talked about in our school, so we have a rolling cohort of teachers completing it each term. Added to this, we decided this year that one or two members of staff may need a little nudge to really see the benefits, and therefore decided to make Assessment Essentials a requirement of every teacher over the next 18 months. Even those who were initially reluctant to take it on have reported positively on how the course has made them question their practice and reflect on what they can do better, and as a school, we are now in a position to continue to build on this shift in thinking over the coming years.”
And finally, what are the benefits that you expect to see from training all staff (current and new) with Assessment Essentials?
“The real benefit we have already seen in teachers, who have completed the course, is the way it has made us all question the purpose and validity of our day-to-day assessment in the classroom. There is a much deeper understanding amongst staff of what assessment information we want to generate, how we can do this, and what we will then do with this information to help students make greater progress. There is a much wider understanding of assessment now beyond grades and marks, and staff are keen to try things in the classroom that they may not previously have considered.”
The Assessment Essentials unlimited licence allows a school to put an unlimited number of staff through the course within a year and develop a whole-school assessment practice. If you would like to learn more about training all of your current and new staff with our unlimited Assessment Essentials licence, please contact us here.
