How to evaluate the quality of assessments

Once you've established the purpose of your internal assessments, use our list of questions to help you assess their quality.

Last reviewed on 6 December 2021
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 34591
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 

You can have a whole-school approach to assessment that contains general core principles that are consistently applied across the school. But you'll also need to evaluate assessment needs on a subject-by-subject basis. This is because the: 

  • Content can be very different across different subjects (for example, art, maths and RE need different formats)
  • Proportion of lessons differs, so if you use the same amount of assessment across all subjects, those with a low number of lessons might end up with lots of assessments, with little space in between

Make sure your staff are confident on: 

  • The reasons for setting an assessment
  • What useful information or action it can produce

Work through the questions in the download to help you evaluate your school's assessments. The questions are grouped