ABSTRACT
At first sight, the idea of being creative within assessment might seem a little strange. After all, isn’t this the area in which objectivity, rigour and standards are the touchstones, and in which there is little room for teachers to manoeuvre, whatever they may wish they could change? In one sense this is true. For example, the teacher of a modern foreign language at Advanced level may find they can exercise some choice in conjunction with their colleagues about which syllabus to use for their students, but the alternatives will not differ in most respects. Or again, those parts of the ‘official’ assessing which the teachers do themselves – say of a coursework component – will be governed quite strictly by the examination body, and will include some element of systematic scrutiny of grading by that body (moderation) as well. Teachers can and do get involved with major initiatives that seek to influence the shape of published curricula and their assessment (see for example Crombie White, 1997), but this is probably the wrong place to look for most of the day-to-day opportunities for creativity in assessment. As will be argued in this chapter, most of these opportunities are in the area of formative assessment and in the management of the relationships between teachers, learners and the curriculum.
