Assessment FOR Learning vs Assessment OF Learning

Walk into a typical primary school staffroom and you'll hear the word "assessment" used 50 times a day. Assessment data, assessment week, formative assessment, summative assessment, AfL, end of unit, baseline.

The problem is that "assessment" covers two completely different activities, and most schools blur them. Distinguishing them clearly is one of the most useful things a teacher can do.

The two purposes

**Assessment OF learning** (summative): finding out what children have learned. Used to report, grade, inform parents, demonstrate progress to inspectors.

**Assessment FOR learning** (formative): finding out what to teach next. Used to adjust the lesson, target support, plan tomorrow.

These are different activities with different methods. They're also different *moods*. Summative assessment is about looking back. Formative is about looking forward.

Why blurring them matters

When schools blur the two, several things go wrong:

**1. Tests get over-weighted.** Schools that treat every assessment as semi-summative (will inform reports, parents, leadership data) end up assessing constantly with high stakes. This crowds out the lower-stakes, formative checking that actually drives learning.

**2. Marking gets distorted.** Marking that focuses on "evidence" (summative) rather than "next steps" (formative) is the marking that takes hours and changes nothing.

**3. Children don't know what they're being judged on.** When a single piece of work is being marked simultaneously for "what have you learned" (summative) and "what should you do next" (formative), children get mixed signals.

What good formative assessment looks like

The simplest definition: anything that tells you what to teach next.

Examples that work:

**Hinge questions during lessons.** A multiple-choice question, midway through teaching, that diagnoses misconception. "Which of these is a half? a) one of two equal parts b) one part of any whole c) two of any number." If 28/30 children answer (a), continue. If 15/30 answer (b) or (c), stop and reteach.

**Mini whiteboards.** Constant low-stakes checking. "Show me 7 + 8 on your whiteboard." You can see at a glance who's got it and who hasn't.

**Cold-calling with thinking time.** Don't just ask the children with hands up. Ask "Sarah, what do you think?" — across the class, you build a better picture of who really understands.

**Exit tickets.** A 30-second question at the end of the lesson. Children answer on a slip of paper. You read them in 5 minutes after the lesson. Tomorrow's plan adjusts accordingly.

These are all formative. They don't go in a data tracker. They aren't reported. They're tools for the teacher to know what to teach tomorrow.

What good summative assessment looks like

Summative assessment should be:

- **Periodic, not constant.** End of unit, end of term, end of year. Not weekly. - **Properly designed.** A good summative test covers the content fairly, in proportion to its importance. - **Used to inform reports, planning for next year, identifying children needing support.** - **Communicated clearly to children and parents.** "This was a test of what you've learned about fractions. Here's what you got right and what you need to work on."

The marking-policy implication

Many schools' marking policies effectively turn every piece of work into mini-summative assessment. Every book is checked, marked, evidenced.

This is a misuse of marking. Most marking should be formative — what the teacher does *because of it* matters more than what's written in the book.

Better policy structure: most marking is light-touch (ticks, brief comments, verbal feedback noted). Periodic deeper marking on key pieces. End-of-unit summative assessment is a separate activity.

What about progress data?

Most schools track progress through some kind of grading system — children are "secure", "emerging", "exceeding" or have a numerical score that builds across the year.

Most of this data is more performative than useful. Senior leaders look at it, governors look at it, but the data rarely changes any individual child's teaching.

A simpler approach that works: termly summative assessment that produces real, comparable data on a small number of key skills (e.g. reading age, maths fluency, writing at age-related expectations). Don't pretend to track everything.

The teacher who *knows their class* — who can tell you in 30 seconds where each child is and what they need — is using formative assessment. They don't need a tracker for that. The tracker is for the people who don't see the children every day.

What to do this term

If you only do one thing: pick one strategy from the formative list (mini whiteboards, exit tickets, hinge questions) and use it every lesson for two weeks. Notice what you learn.

The first week, you'll discover that several children you thought understood, didn't. The second week, you'll start adjusting your teaching based on what you see.

That's formative assessment in action. It doesn't require a data system. It changes everything.

The professional shift

A profession that takes formative assessment seriously looks different from one that takes summative seriously. The former invests in teacher judgment, classroom routines, low-stakes checking. The latter invests in trackers, dashboards, data leads.

The former produces better learning. The latter produces better-looking accountability.

The challenge is that you can't see formative assessment from outside the classroom — only the teacher and the children know it's happening. So schools, under pressure to demonstrate "data", often default to the visible-but-less-useful summative approach.

Knowing the distinction lets you push back, intelligently, on assessment demands that aren't actually helping. Some are. Some aren't. Telling them apart is the work.