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Chris Wheadon

Making a mockery of marking: The new GCSE English Language mocks

2016-12-05T13:38:59+00:00December 5th, 2016|assessment|

The following is a guest post from the mastermind of Comparative Judgement, Dr Chris Wheadon. The marking of English Language is likely to be extremely challenging this year. English Language has long form answer questions, typically with 8, 16 and 24 mark responses. Ofqual’s research suggests the following range of precision is normal across GCSE and A level: 8 mark items: +/- 3 marks 16 mark items: +/- 4 marks 24 mark items: +/- 6 marks So, when an 8 mark item is marked, for the same response, it is normal for one marker to give 4 marks, while another will give 7 [...]

Improving critical reading through comparative judgement

2016-05-11T19:04:24+01:00May 11th, 2016|English, reading|

The following is a guest blog from Dr Chris Wheadon of No More Marking. The reformed GCSEs in English present new challenges for pupils in critical reading and comprehension. Teachers across the country - and pupils - are studying mark schemes and trying to interpret what they mean and how they may relate to standards. No More Marking, working with David Didau and a group of 11 schools took a different approach. David created some stimulus material for pupils in Year 10 in line with the reformed GCSE English questions. Pupils were given an unseen text and then asked to write [...]

Proof of progress Part 2

2016-07-06T22:04:47+01:00March 11th, 2016|assessment|

Back in January I described the comparative judgement trial that we were undertaking at Swindon Academy in collaboration with Chris Wheadon and his shiny, new Proof of Progress system. Today, Chris met with our KS2 team and several brave volunteers from the secondary English faculty to judge the completed scripts our Year 5 students had written. Chris began proceedings by briefly describing the process and explaining that we should aim to make a judgements every 20 seconds or so. The process really couldn't be simpler: the system displays two scripts at a time and you just have to judge which one you think is [...]

Proof of progress – Part 1

2016-03-10T23:03:10+00:00January 30th, 2016|assessment|

Measuring progress is a big deal. I've written before about the many and various ways we get assessment wrong but, increasingly, I'm becoming convinced there are some ways we might get it right. As regular readers will know, I'm interested in the potential of comparative judgement (CJ) and have written about it here and here. Greg Ashman mentions the process obliquely in his new book: When we measure on an absolute scale using a set of criteria, we introduce the possibility of all students scoring 9 or 10 out of 10, particularly if we have trained them well. However, what is really of [...]

Rethinking assessment Part 2: the Einstellung effect

2015-11-16T12:53:55+00:00November 15th, 2015|assessment|

As I set out here, Dr Chris Wheadon has come up with a beautifully simple solution to assessing students' essays which requires no rubrics, very little marking time and produces extremely reliable results with no attendant loss of validity. It relies on the cumulative power of comparative judgement and represents the future of assessment for subjects which rely on essay length answers to open-ended questions. If you doubt me, the reason might be that your experience of, and sense of success with, mark schemes has blinded you to better alternatives. Imagine you have 3 water jars, each with the capacity to hold a different, fixed [...]

Rethinking assessment Part 1: How can we tell if students are making progress?

2020-06-19T19:15:58+01:00November 15th, 2015|assessment|

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork? Stanislaw J. Lec For some time now I've been of the opinion that the way we normally think of progress is based on a myth. Part of the problem is that because we tend to believe that we can see learning we routinely miss the fact that what students can do here and now tells us relatively little about what they can elsewhere and later. We assume  In What If Everything We Knew About Education Was Wrong? I argue that Progress is just a metaphor. It doesn’t really describe objective reality; it provides [...]

Could less marking mean more feedback?

2015-09-27T18:32:36+01:00September 27th, 2015|Featured|

Opportunity makes a thief. - Francis Bacon I wrote recently about the differences between marking and feedback. In brief, and contrary to popular wisdom, they are not the same thing; feedback is universally agreed to be a good bet in teachers' efforts to improve student outcomes whereas as marking appears to be almost entirely unsupported by evidence and neglected by researchers. Marking takes time Although there are some who dislike the use of the term opportunity cost being applied to education, there's no getting away from the fact that whilst we may be able to renew all sorts of resources, time is always finite. [...]

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