Why controlled assessment

For more information please visit our cookies policy. Accept and close. A controlled assessment is a major piece of work completed at school as part of a GCSE course. Controlled assessment measures subject specific skills that may not necessarily be tested by external assessment. All students must sign a declaration to confirm that the work submitted is their own. Controlled assessments are marked by the teacher and submitted to the exam board for moderation. The controlled assessment task contributes marks to the final GCSE grade.

A controlled assessment is completed under the control of the teacher. Students are given either a maximum number of hours to complete the assessment or a maximum word limit for the finished piece. Controlled assessments in different subjects have different levels of control. In other subjects, group work is allowed and the controls are less formal.

Your experiences sound much worse than mine. I have at least had some success with getting students to work independently and become, perhaps, more self sufficient. Yes, the situation is as you say: a system for eliminating unfairness and malpractice is actually encouraging it.

Very disturbing. The issue is the time constraint. The time limit does not recognise that some students work quicker than others and essentially everyone learns at different speeds. It also values speed over quality. The consequence of the time constraints is that students will rush their work to finish on time and therefore produce mediocre work compared to what they could produce in old coursework days.

Nobody is allowed to do overtime and nobody can speak to anyone else. Why do we assume everyone can work at the same rate and why do we not let them produce better quality work.

The fear is plagiarism, but by questioning the previous coursework disclaimers we filled out for several years, the exam boards are essentially questioning our professionalism.

As teachers we are professionals, we are responsible in the same way accountants, lawyers, doctors and nurses are responsible. People rely on us to act professionally, by stating that plagiarism was a big issue and still is, you are questioning our ability to identify and report plagiarism. They can spend hours at home rehearsing i. Now this works for something like Music or Dance as they are performances, we are assessing the performance on the day based on practise.

But to assess writing or use of software in ICT in the same way is meaningless and soul destroying. What are you teaching students about the real world? You just have to prepare by practising one solution over and over and then reproducing it in under 2 hours. CA is ultimately assessing the speed of performance in many cases, the speed of typing and writing.

We need to focus on focus on assessing real learning, not regurgitation or rote learning. We need to focus on enjoyment and real world learning. It was 36 pages long and words. For the entire CA, we are advised 30 hours of CA. There are 4 tasks. That equates to just over 7 hours per task. The evaluation itself is to be completed at the end of a task. I would therefore allocate an hour, maybe 2 hrs CA time for this task.

Now assuming an average composition rate of 19 words per minute, it would take 14 hours to write that review. Assuming a transcription rate i. Yes, on the examiners report it did say the candidate had written too much, but she was not greatly penalised for clearly breaking the 30 hour CA time limit. What should our students do to meet this A-grade exemplar work? Spend the same 14 hours on a word review document and therefore break the 30 hour word limit. Or should they just write the 2 or 3 sides of A4 that is manageable and expected in 1 our 2 hours and score a D-grade?

More interestingly, what do you think as a teacher you should do? I want to see A-grade work that can be achieved in the 30 hour CA time and see that it is realistic. When C. No more marking endless drafts, with only tiny changes, no more plagiarism concerns and no more identical essays produced by over reliance on writing frames and teacher produced plans. As a faculty, we thought long and hard about how to accomodate the changes in assessment, whilst still maintaining a commitment to both formative and summative assessment.

We structured the GCSE English and English Literature course over two years, starting with the controlled assessments that we felt students would feel most confident in writing and gradually building more the more challenging pieces Shakespeare and Poetry comparison! Working closely with SLT and pastoral teams ensures that students recognise the importance of the controlled assessment.

Assessments take place within usual classrooms, with usual staff, but SLT and pastoral teams are situated within easy reach and any disruptive elements are dealt with as seriously as they would be in an externally assessed situation.

As a faculty, we have definitely found controlled assessment to be a challenge, but embedding assessment for learning throughout all schemes of work, with a focus on more meaningful marking and much more emphasis on independent learning has changed the way we teach and given a great deal more ownership to students.

CA is such a waste of teaching time. Your post got me thinking very much in terms of my own school and our context and how Controlled Assessment allowed us to move things on in a variety of ways. Really, we were lucky that controlled assessment came along when it did, because we needed to change how we were doing things. In terms of behaviour, SLT support was more of a preemptive strike which has been largely unnecessary.

Students have responded brilliantly to controlled assessment and take it very seriously. The move to controlled assessment has provided the impetus to change this culture and ensure a much more focused approach. Feedback comes in verbal or written format using skills based targets that apply to more than one context. Marking load has definitely been reduced.

I am relieved that this is no longer possible. I completely agree that time is a big issue. Students still engage with interesting and relevant texts and ideas, whilst practicing functional skills that will benefit them in their English examinations and beyond. I try to look on the bright side that at least that are experiencing a good range of literature and pack as much in I can! As with any new initiative there are teething problems, but hopefully the more we do it, the better we will get at seeing around the red tape and make it work for our schools.

My journey re CA has been the opposite of the one you describe. I was hugely enthusiastic about it when it was announced and could see lots of ways it could be better than cwk. Our assessment practices have always been skills based and rooted in AfL. Whilst I can see lots of ways in which CA can make students more independent, the need to do everything under supervision actually means they are de facto reliant on a teacher in order to do their work.

So Thx. Regular readers will be aware of my views on controlled assessment but again, this is the would we live in and knowing how to set and mark tasks is crucial. I […]. But why do we want to restrict the number of students who are awarded a C […].

There may be occasions, however, when it is more appropriate or convenient to have all students in a larger venue under close supervision; but this will be the exception. Each stage has a level of control high, medium or low to ensure reliability and authenticity and to make assessments more manageable for teachers and students.

Individual subject specifications give specific details about which tasks are high, medium and low control. If ICT use is permitted during controlled assessment students are not permitted to access their work between controlled assessment sessions. They are usually research tasks that students can collect at home and bring to class. Home School Info. Exam Results. Privacy Notice. Options Options Booklet Has no item to show!