How to evaluate the quality of assessments

Establish the purpose of your internal assessments, and download and use our list of questions to help you gauge their quality.

Last reviewed on 27 January 2026See updates
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Contents
  1. Establish the purpose of each assessment 
  2. Use our questions to assess the quality of your assessments 

The advice in this article applies to schools who have designed their own internal assessments. 

Establish the purpose of each assessment 

Your whole-school approach to assessment will contain core principles that are consistently applied across your school. You'll also need to evaluate assessment needs on a subject-by-subject basis.

This is because the: 

  • Content can vary across different subjects (for example, art, maths and RE need different formats)
  • Proportion of lessons differs, so if you use the same number of assessments across all subjects, those with a lower number of lessons might end up with lots of assessments, with few gaps in between

You might use assessment to:

  • Help pupils embed and use knowledge fluently 
  • Check pupil understanding
  • Gauge pupils' different starting points and gaps in knowledge
  • Inform teaching, based on any gaps in understanding or knowledge

Use