Standardised Testing: Measuring What Matters?

Few features of modern education provoke such strong reactions as the standardised test. To its defenders, it is a model of fairness: every pupil answers the same questions under the same conditions, and the results can be compared across classrooms, schools and even countries. To its critics, it is a blunt instrument that reduces a young person's education to a number. Both sides contend that they are protecting children, and each is at least partly right. Those who favour standardised testing begin with the argument from objectivity. A teacher's judgement, however conscientious, is inevitably coloured by familiarity, mood or unconscious bias, whereas an examination marked anonymously offers every candidate the same chance. Such tests also provide governments and parents with a view of how well schools are performing, which can expose inequalities that might otherwise remain hidden. If one district consistently produces weaker results than another, supporters say, society has both the evidence and the duty to ask why. Moreover, a shared yardstick allows talented pupils from modest backgrounds to demonstrate abilities that a teacher's impression or a family's connections might never have revealed. Without common measures, they warn, judgements about education would rest on reputation and rumour. Sceptics reply that what is easy to measure is not necessarily what is important. Creativity, collaboration, persistence and curiosity do not fit comfortably into a multiple-choice format, yet they may be the qualities that determine how people fare in later life. There is also the problem of "teaching to the test". When results determine a school's funding or a teacher's reputation, lessons tend to narrow towards whatever will be examined, and subjects such as art, music and sport are quietly squeezed out. The economist Charles Goodhart is associated with an observation, often paraphrased, that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Critics add that high-pressure examinations are a source of considerable anxiety, particularly among adolescents. The disagreement is rarely as stark as the slogans imply. Few people want a system without any assessment, and few believe a single score captures a person. Consequently, many education authorities are experimenting with compromises: sampling tests, which monitor the system without placing every pupil under pressure; portfolios of coursework alongside examinations; and feedback designed to help learners improve rather than simply rank them. What the debate ultimately reveals is a tension between two legitimate values, comparability and richness. A test can tell us, with reasonable reliability, whether a pupil can solve a particular kind of problem. It cannot tell us whether she will find a better one worth solving. The best systems are probably those that remember the difference.