AFL: let us never speak of it again...

The penny has dropped for me that it's possible and preferable to discuss the theory and practical implementation of Assessment for Learning without ever using the term itself. Whilst this is, for reasons I'll explain, a step forward, I can't help feeling slightly bereft, carrying as I do a strong sense of gratitude to AFL for helping me improve my own practice. Dumping the jargon seems somehow disloyal; I've been going about it for years, and the idea of never referring to Success Criteria again seems like saying goodbye to an old friend, albeit a friend who seems to confuse everyone and is a bit of a mouthful to keep referencing in training sessions.

I must confess to a history of being something of a jargon-apologist (jargologist?), on the basis that we do need names to call stuff, and having a professional lexicon is not necessarily such a bad thing. I recall an entertaining exchange with a colleague who reacted strongly against the use of the word 'coaching', because, I think, of the association with sports coaching and the potential therefore for lesson observations to be followed by Alex Ferguson-style 'hair-dryer treatment' feedback...'CALL THAT A F****** LEARNING INTENTION! SORT YOURSELF OUT SON'-type stuff.  Anyway, my response was an exasperated 'But we've got to call it something! We do need nouns!' (and, clever clogs English teachers, I do know that 'coaching' is technically a gerund, but to reply 'We do need gerunds!' would surely have confused things still further, beyond reasonable hope of a return to manageable clarity). Anyway, in the case of Assessment for Learning, finally stripping away the jargon feels liberating, because it emphasises that the principles of AFL are fairly inarguable common-sense: know what you are teaching, help them to learn it, push them on quality, make sure they know how they are getting on and how to improve.

This last brings me to the point of this post - a couple of things I just need to get off my chest about the use of National Curriculum levels in lessons, and in particular, in English and the Humanities (I do think that levelling works much more effectively in subjects where layers of success are more easily defined, such as maths / MFL etc).  Given that levels have been banished from primaries, and that KS3 SATS are far enough in the past for English teachers' post-traumatic stress symptoms to have subsided to a mere infrequent twitch, it's surely time to have another look at NC levels at KS3 and make some changes. 

It's interesting that the AFL research and guidance has been absolutely clear about this all the way along: if you throw NC levels around liberally in classrooms, levelling individual pieces of work and making the pursuit of levels central to the day to day experience of being in schools, students will obsess over them and it will harm their learning. Yet this apparently pretty crucial piece of straightforward, evidence-led guidance is the element of AFL that seems most glaringly-ignored, as if schools have blanked it out in order to create more time for teachers to sandpaper their lollipop sticks / polish their traffic lights etc.

So why do we still do it? Why, despite the convincing advice available, does a strong orthodoxy remain which equates teaching so strongly with doling-out levels? Lots of reasons I suppose - the fact that NC levels provide busy teachers with quick access to easily downloadable standards, the fact that school's assessment and reporting systems depend on regular inputting of levels for tracking and analysis, the need for governments to generate graphs to make themselves appear successful, the attraction of having 'national standards' which are supposed to be consistent across the land and more. A reason often given in schools, however, and the one which I'm interested in here, is the idea that students like them and are entitled to them, and in particular the idea that giving levels functions as a useful motivation to get kids working.

It's certainly the case that, when put in a context where levels are available, students will express natural curiosity and an emotional response to receiving levels on their work. Sometimes, that response will be positive, such as when a student who has been getting level 5 now gets a level 6. At this point, it's tempting to conclude that everything is therefore fine - students get to know how well they are doing; everything's clear and straightforward, and everyone knows that they just need to work hard and do what they are told in order to get to a higher level. 

Unfortunately, this logical, simplistic approach totally fails to recognise the complexity of the interplay of emotional and social factors which are inescapable in classrooms. There's some brilliant stuff on this in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone , which explains the notion of 'social evaluative threat'. This is based on the view that humans are 'highly vigilant to threats to (our) social esteem', and that shame is an overpowering emotion. The research shows that, basically, if you really want to make people stressed, anxious and unable to learn, then put them in a situation where they are publicly judged and compared alongside others when undertaking something that it is not in their power to directly influence. Give them something they can't do, then share their performance alongside that of their peers. Of course it could be argued that in schools, students aren't given things they can't do; that they are taught before being asked to perform. Again, this ignores the fact that students are inevitably working from such widely-differing starting points - schools are not level-playing fields, particularly when it comes to the levels of literacy students bring with them. Therefore, when we put students in English lessons and start chucking around levels, is it any wonder that a proportion of those working at lower levels become resentful and disengaged? That students can feel a combination of shame and powerlessness which can make kids choose to behave badly? Who wouldn't? And we shouldn't be surprised that, as a result, attainment gaps emerge and widen, and, to the detriment of all of us, inequality is sustained.

So to conclude, and as we set off on a new school year, I'd just make a plea for sensitivity and mindfulness in the way that we use levels in classrooms, particularly at KS3, remembering always that while Student A is fist-pumping over her 7c, Student B is, much less demonstratively, quietly gutted and ashamed, again, at his 3a, even if it has gone up from a 3b last time. We all know how careful it's necessary to be regarding gradings given to teachers on lesson observations; it can only be right that the same degree of caution and discretion is shown towards our students.