The impact of formal assessment procedures on teaching and learning in art and design in secondary schools

Background: The context for GCSE and changes over time

The introduction in the mid-1980s of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) marked the beginning of the 'reforms' that have continued unabated to the present time – not that the introduction of the GCSE was a rushed affair. The initial proposals to combine the General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level (GCE 'O' Level) and the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) examinations dated back at least to the days of the Schools Council and Prime Minister James Callaghan's seminal lecture at Ruskin College Oxford in 1976. The new examination was aimed principally at the top 60 percentile of the 16+ ability range although, in the case of art and design, the range was often much wider.

The GCSE examinations were welcome and overdue, marking the end of the perceived need for many art teachers to 'double enter' more able students for both examinations. Moreover, the rationale for the introduction of the GCSE was clear enough: the GCE/CSE system was incompatible with comprehensive education and, according to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools (HMI), work in secondary schools was dominated by examinations which, in their view, tended to govern the type and length of classroom activities. The reliability of inter-examination board standards then, as now, was considered questionable, so the new GCSE was administered by just four regional examining groups in England, one examination board in Northern Ireland and another in Wales. At the core of the proposals was the sensible aim to establish common national assessment criteria for all syllabuses and assessment procedures, to ensure that all syllabuses with the same subject title had sufficient content in common, and that all boards applied the same performance standards to the award of grades.

The members of the Secondary Examinations Council (SEC) GCSE Grade Criteria Working Party for Art & Design recognized that the key to the whole exercise was how to define candidates' achievements through explicit criteria while not overly restricting the methods by which they might be achieved. The working party accepted that this approach involved many compromises. These included tacit agreement that it simply may not be possible adequately or equally to assess all curriculum objectives because the evidence for some of them may be too ephemeral to be valid. Lengthy consideration of the aims of art and design subsequently expressed in the GCSE National Criteria led to the identification of three equally weighted, closely interdependent and interrelated domains:

* a Conceptual Domain concerned with the formation and development of ideas and concepts;

* a Productive Domain concerned with the abilities to select, control and use the formal and technical aspects of art and design in the realization of ideas, feelings and intentions; and

* a Critical and Contextual Domain concerned with those aspects of art and design which enable candidates to express ideas and insights which reflect a developing awareness of their own work and that of others.

Of course, this model is only one among many that could have been adopted and might have been equally coherent, but its conceptualization marked a significant step forward. As the working party struggled to develop the detailed criteria, a number of important issues emerged and significant lessons were learned. For example, the dangers of using adjectives such as 'simple' or 'sophisticated' in criterion statements because these kinds of words are ambiguous and open to diverse interpretations – a lesson that often has been overlooked in the interim as they increasingly find their way back into the assessment criteria lexicon.

In retrospect, the introduction of grade criteria was seminal in a number of ways. It can now be seen as the thin end of a wedge leading towards a state in which, as Eisner warns:

... infatuation with performance objectives, criterion referenced testing, competency based education, and the so-called basics lends itself to standardization, operationalism, and behaviorism, as the virtually exclusive concern of schooling. Such a focus is ... far too narrow and not in the best interests of students, teachers, or the society within which students live.

From the mid-1980s, through successive agencies such as the School Curriculum Development Committee (SCDC), the National Curriculum Council (NCC), the School Examinations Council (SEC), the School Examinations and Assessment Council (SEAC), the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), to the present Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), governments have sought once and for all to 'nail the jelly to the wall' through repeated attempts to define the content, aims, objectives, assessment parameters and criteria for all subjects, including art and design. But analysis of the documentation suggests that there has been little new thinking and in reality much of this relentless process has consisted of 're-packaging' (repeated editing and précis) of previous documents to make them fit the common template currently favoured for all curriculum subjects. Thus the publication of Curriculum 2000 and the latest specifications for qualifications give the impression that all questions about what constitutes good practice in schools have been resolved. However, history is likely to prove that this is just an illusion – before long another perceived change of circumstances or belated admission of inherent problems are likely to require a further round of tinkering and reductionism.

Orthodoxy

For many years concerns have been expressed about an increasing orthodoxy of approach in art and design education as a consequence of the examination system. As early as 1982, Eddie Price, an experienced chief examiner and chair of the Schools Council 16+ art sub committee, expressed concerns about the wash back of the examination system on classroom practice and prophesied problems with standardized assessment criteria:

The existing relationship between curriculum and examination syllabuses is a 'dog and tail' affair. The influence of external examinations has, to some extent, bred a species within the genus of 'School Art'. ... The question of whether the 'tail wagging the dog' is a satisfactory state of affairs must be linked with the possibility that the existing dog is a mongrel that defies simple definition. This is not to say that some mongrels are not healthier than some more easily categorised pedigrees, but it does make the establishment of national criteria guidelines more difficult – more difficult in the sense that criteria will necessarily be based upon generalisation of a plethora of objectives and practices – generalisation which will undoubtedly influence the future of art education.

In 1999, Norman Binch, one-time chair of the art and design panel of the largest examination board, reflected on how the GCSE, with its strong emphasis on 'process', influenced the style of work throughout secondary schools. He claimed that this frequently led to a single, linear classroom methodology where:

... the starting point is usually investigation and research, followed by the development of ideas and some experimental activities, and the completion of a finished' piece of work. Whilst the investigation and research can be into any relevant matters, including the work of artists, craftspeople and designers, or into concepts, issues and ideas, it is most commonly based upon objective drawing and visual analysis. The predominant sources of reference are collections of objects set up in the art room. The model reinforces the insular nature of 'school-art' and, even when reference is made to external sources; it is usually based on the same methodology of objective drawing and visual analysis.

This approach Binch describes has proved very reliable over the years producing 'safe' work that of its kind is often of undeniably high technical quality and on which teachers can depend for the award of good grades by the examination boards. Today the examination pressures in secondary schools are overwhelming and influence classroom practice not only at key stage 4 (15- to 16-year-olds) but throughout key stage 3 (11- to 14-year-olds). In our 'high stakes' education system it should be no surprise that teachers are adept at finding effective prescriptions for their students to follow that raise examination scores and, in turn, satisfy the various demands of league tables, inspection and threshold payments (a form of payment by results). But whether such a dominant conventional approach encourages real creativity and is in the best interests of pupils may be another matter.

How has this state of affairs come about? Since the early 1980s syllabuses have provided more and more detailed guidance. Typically, in the earlier generic GCE or CSE syllabuses, a few paragraphs sufficed to outline the content of an art and design examination course, but by 1999 separate art and design syllabuses of 20-40 pages were the norm. Twenty years ago syllabuses rarely contained specific aims, objectives, subject content or mark schemes – principally because the GCE 'O' level examinations generally were externally marked and it was not thought necessary to provide such information for teachers or candidates. There were marked differences between syllabuses but over time an ever-greater conformity between examinations boards/awarding bodies has developed, no doubt as a consequence of requirements to comply with the increasingly rigid examination specifications of the QCA and its various antecedents.

The earlier syllabuses included a wide range of optional papers with a focus in particular on fine art, design and craft skills; for example, lettering, photography, printmaking, pottery, theatre design and mural design. The number of students opting to pursue specialisms such as these in depth appears in general to have diminished, partly as a consequence of the decision to introduce the 'unendorsed' art and design examination and partly by the 'rationalization' of standard titles for endorsed papers. By the end of the twentieth century the overwhelming majority of art and design candidates were entered for unendorsed papers although much of the work submitted took the relatively narrow form of drawing and painting. It is clear that one consequence of the changes that have taken place has been that specialisms have been lost in many schools along with the real choice of studying a particular aspect of art and design in depth or following a more general course of study.

Not all the changes have had a negative impact. Positive outcomes include more guidance for students and teachers, improved student motivation and more examination time. For example, there has been a move away from question papers offering little more than one-word 'starting points' or instructions to examination supervisors about how to set up a still-life group or pose a model. Instead more recent question papers favour formats that offer more support for candidates, for example, a detailed design brief. Another recent approach is to provide a 'question paper' with a single common theme covering a wide range of art, craft and design activities that includes a long, discursive discussion of ideas candidates might wish to develop. Clearly, the intention is to motivate students to respond as creatively as possible to the required 'terminal test'. Twenty years ago the time allocated for a terminal examination was often short, typically two to three hours in which to produce a drawing or composition. The time for all the examining groups is now around ten hours and there is a common pattern of question papers being issued to candidates some weeks in advance of the terminal examination in order to give them opportunity to research and plan their work.

Of particular significance is the marked trend away from an optional, formal art and design history element towards a general requirement for a 'critical and contextual studies' component. This shift has been largely non-contentious but is not unproblematic. Pragmatism has played a part in the widespread acceptance of critical studies in secondary schools because the 'old' art history was very demanding of teaching time and only suited to reasonably academically minded pupils. In contrast, critical studies at examination level are often dependent on pupils researching the 'personal study' component of the examination in their own time. The outcomes of this approach are varied with some exceptional projects in evidence. More generally, however, 'descriptive and non-contextual studies' might be a more apt title. Questions are in order, therefore, about whether or not pupils gain a coherent knowledge of art and design practice from independent 'research' that often has a narrow focus and encourages plagiarism accompanied by unproblematic pastiches of style. There is a continuing need to develop a clear rationale and assessment principles for the critical and contextual studies component in the GCSE and GCE examinations based on a more coherent view of content and cultural transmission, sound investigation, real critical thought and reaction, and articulate debate.

Translating policy into practice

The past twenty years have seen a trend away from holistic assessment with no published criteria or mark schemes to a process of aggregation of component marks, based on mark schemes closely related to the published assessment objectives; and as a consequence of this examinations often determine the implicit taught curriculum. It is becoming evident that this leads to fragmentation and to teachers teaching to specific assessment criteria in the knowledge that so long as pupils provide clear evidence of some engagement with the ideas and practices embedded in the criteria they are rewarded, almost regardless of the actual quality of their work. Of necessity, assessment criteria are drafted so as to be generally applicable to a wide range of specialisms and activities. As a consequence they can be difficult to apply to some of the more unusual outcomes and inhibit some of the more creative responses to new media and technologies, for example, that reflect contemporary practice in art and design. In effect, when there is over-reliance on criteria they act as a regulatory device through which both teaching and learning practices are normalised.

Although 'coursework' was not generally a component of the GCE 'O' level examination, it was a valued element of the GCSE from the outset. However, from the early1990s onwards the government has sought to reduce its importance in all subjects in favour of the terminal test (in art and design there is preferential treatment of the test and the permitted ratio of coursework to terminal examination is presently 60:40). What constitutes a 'unit' of coursework is not always well defined, although it is evident that the best and most committed candidates continue to select from a considerable portfolio of coursework.

Most of the change that has taken place has ostensibly been in the interests of increasing examination reliability. However, in art and design reliability remains an issue, particularly given the reduction in awarding bodies and much-increased size of entry for GCSE art and design examinations. In the past, smaller examination boards with relatively small entries employed small teams of examiners. Although not dependent on formal mark schemes or assessment criteria, it seems reasonable to assume that a good level of consensus used to be reached on standards, especially as one examiner often assessed all the work for a particular component. In 2000 at least one awarding body employed over 200 moderators and it is obvious that reliability must be dependent entirely on effective standardization procedures.