ABSTRACT
Measuring historical development in a child is a challenging task for the busy classroom teacher. You, as subject manager, have an important role in developing in the staff a confidence and an expertise in this area. The temptation to give a content-based test to check on the knowledge base of the child will be there. If you, as the subject manager, have encouraged the staff to see history in more complex terms than fact gathering then the measurement techniques you will adopt in looking at children’s history knowledge, skills and attitudes will be more refined and diffuse than a pencil and paper test. It is important to accurately assess pupils’ understanding and the way it progresses within and across specific subject areas and you will need to convince staff of this. They must always see relevance in any assessment they do, otherwise it can be regarded as a way of gathering paper for ‘them’, rather than for themselves and for the benefit of their children. Before we look in more detail at the ways and means of assessing children’s historical knowledge and skills, it is useful to rehearse the several purposes of assessment with the staff in order to clarify matters. It is of vital importance, after all, that each assessment carried out in history has a purpose. The assessment cannot just be to fulfil the needs of the school’s assessment policy-it needs to serve a useful, learningbased purpose as well.
