Exams: One of the key tasks of educators is to equip our children with the skills they will need for the world they will enter after they leave school. For many, this will inevitably involve the use of technology in some way, and especially the use of computers.
There were not many benefits of the lockdowns caused by the pandemic, but one of the few was that the education sector rapidly adapted to greater use of online learning and more modern teaching practices. At Malvern College, we had already started to introduce technology such as Zoom, Teams and OneNote long before the first lockdown.
“This is a key step towards ensuring every child can be assessed in a way that suits their own needs and abilities.”
We did this because these are tools that can vastly improve how we educate our children; they are not just ports in a storm, they add real value. The ability to share, to collaborate and to research are all at our pupils’ fingertips, just as they are to us in the world beyond the classroom. Technology has also given our pupils a greater range of tools and skills through which they can express their ability, knowledge and understanding.
And yet, the way we assess our children, through hand-written exams, has not really evolved. It still involves sitting at desks hand-writing answers and exam papers in the same way I did, and my parents did before me.
Thankfully, that is beginning to change. Along with some other exam boards, the International Baccalaureate is leading the way, by announcing plans to move exams and assessment online. I strongly believe this is a key step towards ensuring every child can be assessed in a way that suits their own needs and abilities.
Olli-Pekka Heinonen, the director-general of the IB, says moving exams online is one of his top priorities because it presents opportunities to look at students’ abilities in new ways better suited to the workplace and the modern world. This is very encouraging and it also comes with an additional benefit.
“Research highlights the functional brain development value provided by writing with pen and paper.”
By formally incorporating technology into the assessment process, schools are actively encouraged to prepare pupils for the skills they are likely to need in the future. There are a lot of very good reasons for encouraging people to write with pen on paper, research highlights the functional brain development value it provides, but the reason I don’t like hearing is purely “so that pupils can write more in an exam”.
How many people who work in offices, or indeed outside them, use a pen and paper regularly anymore? Schools have rapidly grasped the benefits of technology and pupils are increasingly choosing to express themselves in a wider range of formats. Exam boards that have not already started exploring alternative and technological means of assessing our pupils are in danger of looking antiquated and narrow-minded for hanging on to this old-fashioned method as the only way of measuring success.
At Malvern College we are, this year, celebrating 30 years of offering the International Baccalaureate to our pupils. The IB gives our students a broader curriculum than A-levels, with six subjects, an extended essay and a critical thinking course: Theory of Knowledge.
“Exam boards that are not exploring alternative means of assessing pupils are in danger of looking antiquated.”
Mr Heinonen argues that a broader curriculum helps young people to prepare for the modern world by teaching them to understand how different ideas and subjects relate to one another, and through this greater breadth comes a wider set of skills and contexts for further intellectual development. That ties in with what we promote at our school through what we call the “Malvern Qualities”. These help equip our pupils for life’s challenges, enabling them to adapt and succeed in a rapidly evolving world.
We particularly like the Theory of Knowledge element of the IB, which develops pupils’ critical thinking skills and teaches them to interrogate how they know what they know.
But as I’ve said, it is important that educators focus on each pupil’s individual needs. The pupils the IB attracts are those who have a great interest in the world around them and who wish to study a wide range of subjects aligned to that interest. We offer 26 subjects across A levels and IB, providing every pupil with a pathway to suit their individual requirements and wider aspirations; it is important that we develop our assessment approach to ensure each of them is able to demonstrate their ability in the most appropriate way.
