Record keeping is an essential part of teaching. Gravells says: “Records must be maintained throughout to satisfy your organisation, the regulatory authorities and Awarding Organisation.” (2011: 10) According to Tummons (2007), some key concepts of assessment are: fairness, validity, reliability, sufficiency, authenticity and currency. Another important principle is known as VACSR: valid, authentic, current, sufficient and reliable. (Gravells: 2011) Following these principles of assessment ensures compliance with regulations, qualification requirements assessment validity and reliability. Additionally, it is a legal requirement to keep accurate records on learners as internal and external auditors such as OFSTED may use them “to quality assure performances at organisational level against national standards, to justify appropriate use of public funds.” (Wilson: 2008: 338)
These records can also be used to assist teaching performance in delivering the subject and future lesson planning. (Wilson: 2008) For students who may not be performing well, teaching and learning strategies can be reassessed to check if they are meeting learners’ needs. In other cases assessment records can also be used to pin point any learning difficulties that a student may have such as dyslexia or dyspraxia. Once pin pointed the learner can be referred to a specialist and given special assessment requirements. Records must be kept in order to monitor learners’ progression as well as evidence of the teacher’s observation of the learners’ performance. This can be done through initial or diagnostic assessments such ILP, which is also apart of self-assessment. Other records include tracking grades, progression reports, tutorial reviews and feedback.
On BTEC Media course, the teacher keeps a digitised record of all the learners’ grades to monitor their progression. This also helps the teacher monitor: a) feedback b) progression c) student grades d) whether they have met the deadline e) marking process. Looking at the key, we can see that learners are given the opportunity to improve their work. Feedback is given to the students on their work, which is kept by the teacher. Any improvements that are made by the learners must be highlighted on the word document to indicate that the work has been rectified. The teacher shares this with me, which helps with when I support students, as I am aware of their developmental needs. For example, some of the year 2 students were having difficulty with constructing an essay, which was highlighted by their progression reports from other teachers. Knowing this enabled me to prepare a lesson on essay structure and I gave them hand outs (Glossary of Instruction Words and Sentence Starters) to support them. Significantly, the education system is dominated by meritocracy. For this reason grades are constantly emphasised and learners tend to concentrate on this rather than their feedback. Is this always true?
In my placement, teachers have been encouraged to incorporate AFL in the way they mark work. This means, students will get their work back with detailed feedback and no grade. This stems around the idea that if there is no grade, students will pay more attention to their feedback and developmental needs. I have found that this works to an extent. Whilst I agree that the education system is dominated by meritocracy, I think a small part of it motivates students and gives them a goal to work towards.
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