Diversity of assessment literacy among in-service primary teachers.

Recent changes to assessment policy in England have brought the development of teachers’ assessment literacy to the fore. The Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (DfE, 2015) highlighted the variability in assessment training however, leaving schools to plug gaps in knowledge and competency. Dwindling professional development budgets have led some head teachers to develop bespoke in-house interventions, but do these serve all teachers equally well? A tool called the TAPS pyramid (Earle et al., 2016) was developed to help teachers and school leaders evaluate and improve their use of assessment in primary science. It specifies the assessment activities at different reporting levels within a school, and has been downloaded over 5,700 times since August 2015. Little is known, however, about how teachers have used it to inform and improve their assessment practice, nor of how that use might vary between different groups. This study collected online survey data over a two month period from 96 teachers, science subject leaders, deputies and heads who had used the TAPS pyramid in English primary schools. Quantitative analysis revealed significant differences in use and impact upon assessment practice, according to job role and years’ experience of teaching. These differences are considered from the perspectives of assessment policy changes, initial teacher training and the fluctuating status of primary science within the curriculum, before a call is made for head teachers to formatively assess the assessment literacy of their workforce before designing an intervention to develop their staff.