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British Journal of Religious Education

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Issues in Achievement and Assessment in Religious

Education in England: Which Way Should We Turn?
Lat Blaylock
Published online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Lat Blaylock (2000) Issues in Achievement and Assessment in Religious Education in England: Which Way
Should We Turn?, British Journal of Religious Education, 23:1, 45-58

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0141620000230106

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 Issues in Achievement and Assessment in Religious
Education in England: Which Way Should We Turn?
Lat Blaylock

This article examines and discusses current thinking and practice in assessing pupils' achievements in RE
in England, with reference to recent trends in Agreed Syllabuses, and national initiatives to promote the
use of assessment structures parallel to the English National Curriculum eight-level scales.

Some theoretical discussion of assessment drawn from educational research in a wider field than RE is
applied to the particular demands of an RE curriculum that emphasises 'learning from' religion and
related concepts. Consideration of attempts to describe achievements in RE on numerical scales leads the
author to argue that these attempts, often based on models which are more suited to, or derived from,
the learning objectives of, for example, science or mathematics, carry a tendency towards spurious claims
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of validity and accuracy, without providing a clear or rounded picture of what pupils have achieved in
learning from religion. Tension between formative purposes and comparability purposes in assessment
of RE is explored, and it is argued that comparability purposes should be set aside by RE professionals.
The author uses concepts of 'rich' knowledge and 'authentic assessment' to argue in favour of
approaches which are based centrally upon the application of teachers' professional judgement, using a
range of assessment strategies which tend towards assembling a broad and textured picture of a pupil's
achievement, accessible to pupils themselves, and used formatively in the learning process. Some
examples of such approaches are described. Some lines of further research are suggested.

INTRODUCTION

The assessment of pupils' achievements in Religious Education in the schools of England and Wales has
become a central issue for teachers of the subject in the last ten years, as the assessment of educational
outcomes in other curriculum subjects has been accorded increasing importance and status in both
political and educational discourse. The growth of the place of assessment in education has been
prompted by numerous factors, among which a continuing central governmental interest in quantifying
educational improvement is foremost. In 1988 the Education Reform Act gave government ministers
powers to determine patterns of assessment in the subjects of the National Curriculum. These powers
did not extend to local Agreed Syllabuses of RE, but the influence of National Curriculum assessment
structures and practice was extensive, and led RE professionals to develop schemes of assessment for
RE which were modelled on National Curriculum terminology and practice. The two foremost examples
of such work undertaken at a level beyond a single Agreed Syllabus, both produced by consortia of
Local Education Authorities and academic institutions, were Forms of Assessment in RE: the FARE
Project (Priestley and Copley 1991) and the Westhill Project, Attainment in RE (Westhill College 1989;
1991). These projects retain considerable influence today, though the decade since their publication has
seen very extensive changes to school assessment practice in the National Curriculum subjects, and
much new research evidence about the practice and effects of assessment strategies. Many local Agreed
Syllabus Conferences incorporated ideas from the two projects into their syllabuses.

British Journal of Religious Education 2 3 : 1 .

 BACKGROUND FROM 1988

The years following 1988 saw a gradual development of the conviction in schools that the National
Curriculum's emphasis upon assessment was fundamentally flawed. This was recognised by the
review of the National Curriculum undertaken by Sir Ron Dearing and the government's curriculum
agency, reported in 1994, which involved an exploration of:

... the scope for slimming down the curriculum, how the central administration of the National
Curriculum and testing arrangements could be improved; how the testing arrangements might be
simplified and the future of the ten level scale for recognising children's attainment. (Dearing 1994,3)

Dearing's final report spoke of the unnecessary complexity and excessive prescriptiveness of the
ten level scale (page 11), noting that while the intention of the assessment structures had been to
assist clear planning, differentiation and assessment, the reality was that:

... we have created an over elaborate system which distorts the nature of the different subjects,
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which serves to fragment teaching and learning in that teachers are planning work from the
statements of attainment, and which has at times reduced the assessment process to a
meaningless ticking of myriad boxes. (Dearing 1994, 61)

Such strongly worded conclusions may permit the RE professional a wry satisfaction that our
subject was not entangled in the myriad and meaningless box ticking, whatever other judgements
we make about RE's relationship to the National Curriculum.

The work of the RE attainment projects referred to above now looks dated. For example, the
Westhill approach of 1989 identified three profile components, ten attainment targets and 146
attainment statements. This could require a secondary RE teacher with 400 pupils to make millions
of judgements about pupils' achievements in RE. The Westhill scheme offers, potentially, a very
fair, detailed and accurate description of a particular pupil's progress and learning. It has a certain
purity and beauty, but seems to me to be of the Platonic kind, belonging to another world, not
the world of classroom RE. The use of terminology from the 'first generation' National Curriculum,
(profile components, ten level scales and multiple attainment targets and a total of 146 attainment
statements) is no longer relevant to the assessment needs of schools. The subsequent work of the
Westhill project moved away from the complexity of the first versions of the National Curriculum,
in directions which many teachers found more practical and helpful (Westhill 1991).

Many of the Agreed Syllabuses of the 1990s have typically made reference to assessment in a
summary way, not drawing on the insights of the FARE and Westhill work (for example,
Leicestershire 1992; Lincolnshire 1993; Wandsworth 1994). Teachers may find such brief reference
unhelpful.

Bates (1992), in an astute review article of four publications on assessing RE for this journal,
analysed the needs of RE professionals regarding assessment in the light of the FARE and Westhill
projects, concluding:

% British Journatof. Religious: Education 23:t

 There is a pressing need for less complex more tightly structured syllabuses which make the task
of teachers more manageable whilst doing justice to the key aspects of the subject... Such is the
burden on teachers, especially in primary schools, and such is the ambivalent status of RE in the
basic curriculum that unless they are presented with sensible, concise, practical guidelines for RE
little of value will be done in the subject at all. (Bates 1992, 59)

The passage of time has not blunted the point; for a discussion of practice in the early 1990s, see
Watson (1993, 142-57). Evidence from Ofsted suggests, generally, that standards of assessment
in RE are particularly weak in comparison to other subjects of the curriculum (for example, Ofsted
1998,160). My own concerns about assessment in RE remain rooted in the idea that pupils deserve
coherent, clear, accurate and fair responses to the work they do in all subjects. In RE the processes
of examining the relationship between living belief systems and human experience to facilitate the
personal searches for meaning with which learners are engaged are open to some assessment
strategies. This view of RE for pupils in County schools is supported and examined elsewhere
(Christian Education Movement 1995).
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CURRENT INITIATIVES TO SUPPORT THE ASSESSMENT OF RE IN ENGLAND:

EXEMPLIFYING STANDARDS

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the government agency with responsibility for
the school curriculum, has recently taken two initiatives in support of assessment of RE. The
publication of examples of pupils' work across the 4-14 age range as an exemplification of
standards in RE has been well received by many teachers, who value some practical illustration of
what might constitute high standards (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 1998). The material
works more as a baseline for discussion than a benchmark, or final arbiter of standards. The
standards set reflect closely the statements about attainment at the end of each key stage (ages
7, 11 and 14) based upon the work of QCA's predecessor body the School Curriculum and
Assessment Authority (SCAA) which published Model Syllabuses for Religious Education for the
guidance of local Agreed Syllabus Conferences in 1994 (SCAA 1994).

Recent Development of 8-Level Scales for RE

The second initiative has been the development of an 8-level scale of attainment, or national
expectations for RE (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2000). This work draws upon recent
national work from the Association of RE Advisers, Inspectors and Consultants (AREIAC 1998), and
parallels the work of QCA in other subject areas such as Music, Geography and Science. It provides
a series of carefully worded statements about what might normally be expected of pupils through
the years, reflecting a learning model which includes knowledge, understanding and skills, but
requires no particular knowledge of any pupil. The scale uses a breakdown of the RE field of
enquiry under six headings, grouped into the two attainment targets, learning about religions and
learning from religion (see table overleaf).

This piece of work takes account of the difficulties of assessing RE, seeks to avoid a narrow or
merely factual account of achievement in RE, makes provision for progression and continuity in

British Journal of Religious Education 23:1

 Learning about religions Learning from religion

Knowledge and understanding of religious Skills of asking and responding to questions

beliefs and teachings; of human identity, personality and
experience;

Knowledge and understanding of religious Skills of asking and responding to questions

practices and lifestyles; of meaning and purpose;

Knowledge and understanding of ways of Skills of asking and responding to questions

expressing meaning. of values and commitments.

pupils' learning and seeks to provide a manageable route forward for Agreed Syllabus
Conferences. My own use of the work with well over 200 teachers in professional development
contexts in recent months has produced two reactions. Some teachers welcome the 8-level scale
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as a solution to some difficult problems at the classroom level, while others reject the scale,
judging it to be a strait-jacket to their work. The QCA 8-level scale is paralleled by developments
in some recent Agreed Syllabuses, such as those from Staffordshire (1992), Somerset (1998),
Hertfordshire (1995) and Conwy (1998) which also use scaled attainment descriptors to frame their
approach to assessing RE.

Assessment practice at Key Stage 4 (ages 14-16) has been significantly influenced in the last ten
years by GCSE criteria and this influence might offer an alternative, but still criterion-referenced
approach to assessing RE, which could be developed for use by age groups below the GCSE 14-16
year olds. I wish to argue that the assessment of GCSE is already narrower than that offered by the
8-level scale, and as such offers no better opportunities for assessing RE.

PURPOSES OF ASSESSMENT

A prior question regarding assessment in RE needs to be addressed: What are the purposes of
educational assessment? Hargreaves, Earl and Ryan (1996) offer a broad approach to the question:
'Educational assessment fulfils diverse purposes which cannot be captured properly in any single
assessment strategy, only in a wide range of assessment strategies.' (page 115). One set of purposes
have to do with accountability, for example to the public, parents, governors, 'management' or tax-
payers. In the recent and current educational climate of England, these purposes tend to
predominate. The use of assessment data from National Curriculum tests in core subjects, GCSE
scores, literacy and numeracy testing and school league tables, not to mention the movement
towards 'payment by results' for individual teachers, emphasises that accountability is a major
reason for assessing the attainment of pupils. This has its danger, as Davis (1998, 29) argues:

If the state places basics such as literacy and numeracy in the centre of schools' action plans,
asserts explicitly that standards in these basics must improve, and that schools who do not
deliver will be regarded as failing, teachers may be less likely to emphasise the cultivation of

BntishJournaf of Religious Educatiore23rt;

 moral dispositions in their pupils. Yet even a minimally democratic state may well depend for its
survival on pupils developing into adulthood having these dispositions in some measure.

It may be considered fortunate that the use of assessment data for accountability in RE seems a very
remote possibility, but still a widespread over-emphasis on accountability purposes in assessment
may have influenced RE professionals, clouding their picture of why assessment in RE might be
important. The common accounts of the purposes of assessment (formative, summative, diagnostic
and evaluative), draw attention to what happens between learners and teachers in particular institu-
tions, but away from the broader social and political context in which assessment takes place.

A second set of purposes for educational assessment are to do with certification and selection.
A major aim of summative assessment at ages 16 and 18 is to enable the two major 'consumers of
the product' of the education system, the employers and the institutions of higher education, to
pick and choose which 'products' they want to work with. So, at an almost ritualised level, hopeful
young people bring tokens of different value to offer to the gatekeepers of the sunny uplands of
further study, or the less educational but more lucrative gatekeepers of the world of work. RE takes
its place here alongside other subjects when GCSE and A level qualifications are taught.
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Thirdly, assessment may have educational diagnosis as its purpose, aiming to identify strengths
and weaknesses for the learner, and address difficulties and extend achievement. These purposes
are about improving the quality of teaching and learning, and forming strategies to help learners.
I have encountered many RE teachers who tend to endorse these formative and diagnostic
purposes for their assessment work, perhaps because these purposes are particularly focused upon
student need, and also because they fit readily with visions of RE that are more about human
development than about education as commodity.

Fourthly, teachers may have other purposes of their own, for example in motivating learners
through the use of assessment. These purposes might include developing learners' self awareness,
showing clearly the progress resulting from committed efforts and enjoying success, creating more
responsibility for their own learning. Evaluative assessment, in which courses or programmes of
study are evaluated by participants, can also improve motivation if teachers develop better practice
as a result of feedback. All of this can build confidence, self-esteem and commitment to continuing
education. Perhaps it is the case that RE needs these purposes above all others, as learners often
lack motivation and question the relevance of their study. This ought to make RE professionals
particularly alert to the obverse, that assessment can also destroy motivation, particularly for those
who usually encounter assessment as failure.

In a wide-ranging summary of research into the effects of assessment practice on learning, Black
and Wiliam (1998, 19) argue that:

There is a body of firm evidence that formative assessment is an essential feature of classroom
work and that development of it can raise standards ... in our study of formative assessment
there can be seen, for once, firm evidence that indicates clearly a direction for change which
could improve standards of learning.

British Journal of Religious Education 23:t **™*M™*WMMWB™wa™jamnmim rm

 RE professionals have much more to learn from the wide research which demonstrates the power
of well-formed assessment strategies to impact upon learners' performance and attainment
through the use of assessment exercises to inform teaching and learning.

This necessarily brief account of distinct but overlapping purposes of assessment draws attention
to RE's particular place in the curriculum in England and Wales. My contention is that RE profes-
sionals should evaluate assessment strategies according to their ability to enhance or depress
motivation, to enable more effective teaching and learning, and to stimulate and celebrate the
widest range of religious education achievements.

It is further important to note the interplay between devising curriculum programmes and
assessing the learning outcomes of those programmes. The truism that 'assessment should not be
a bolt-on' presumably means to draw attention to this. But the experience of National Curriculum
assessment may draw attention to the ways in which rigorous and well planned assessment
strategies may provide a focus to the improvement of teaching and learning strategies, thereby
raising standards of achievement.
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In terms of scale, where national structures have been problematically large, we note that an
opportunity exists for RE local syllabuses to initiate assessment styles and approaches which are on
a more manageable local scale. Examples would include the work of the Dorset LEA and schools
in the projects titled DARE and DREAMS (Langtree 1994). These projects offer coherent structures
for developing programmes of RE which integrate assessment with teaching and learning,
avoiding the criticism that assessment is 'bolted on' to the learning process.

It is a truism that the presence of an observer changes the game and, in education, the presence
of an assessor, or the labelling of a classroom activity as an 'assessment', impacts on the
performance and behaviour of both teachers and learners. When assessment activities are set, the
teacher may narrow his or her normal concerns, for example for learning from religion, spiritual
development or expressions of discernment by learners, and place an unusual emphasis upon
factual knowledge. This reflects the relative ease of setting assessment tasks in a narrowly based
field of factual knowledge, and draws attention to the problematic nature of describing the
breadth of what we want to assess in RE, and how we might find genuine evidence of pupils'
achievements.

Andrew Davis (1998), in a study very critical of the orthodoxies of current assessment practice in
the National Curriculum in England (and particularly of accountability purposes for assessment),
suggests that the knowledge tested by the assessment practice of the National Curriculum is not
rich, holistic or connected knowledge. Davis urges the development of educational practice, and
possibly assessment practice, through which learners are not required to jump through
competency hoops, but rather are enabled to expand the fluency with which they produce ideas,
and construct new knowledge (Davis 1998, 5-63, 168-71).

Davis, following Skemp (1989), offers the metaphor of cognitive maps. Instrumental or 'thin'
knowledge, often the basis of success in assessments and examinations, is like a person who has

British Journal of Religious Education 23:t

 no map but is trying to follow directions in an unfamiliar town. But the learner who has a
'cognitive map' is able to use knowledge which is rich, holistic, connected, to apply observation
and understanding to problems, new situations, or challenges in creative or imaginative ways. This
metaphor is of course full of richness for religious educators: the whole process of RE aims to
develop and enable pupils' abilities to understand the human, spiritual or religious territory in
which they find themselves, and to 'map' in detail their own landscape of meaning, religious
practice and faith, and the ways in which this relates to other relevantly similar landscapes which
they encounter. Further, one instructive metaphor of the plural religious traditions which we work
with sees them as more or less effective attempts to map the territory of human meaning. But in
assessment terms, an 8-level scale of achievement seems to offer a crude tool for evaluating
learners' progress in relation to their developing (religious) cognitive maps. Wide anecdotal
evidence of practice suggests that much in RE that is called 'assessment' provides evidence only of
'thin' knowledge. Inspection evidence has already been cited which might confirm this. Stobart
and Gipps (1997, 17-23) argue that:

Higher order skills such as analysis, interpretation, critique, synthesis, applying knowledge and
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skills to new tasks and constructing a convincing argument are complex activities which cannot
be assessed in simple ways that involve ticking answers ... assessment of meaning and
understanding is crucial in developing such skills. (1997, 23)

RE professionals need a more careful consideration of the question of what kinds of evidence-
gathering in RE have better prospects of showing where learning that is rich, holistic or connected,
developing the higher order skills, is taking place.

THE APPLICATION OF IDEAS OF AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT TO RE

Nuttall (1995, 154), examining assessment in work-related areas, identifies four conditions which
enable assessment tasks to elicit the best possible performance from learners. He advocates tasks
that are:

• concrete and within the experience of the individual;

• presented clearly;
• perceived as relevant to the current concerns of the learner;
• performed under non-threatening conditions, assisted by good relationships between
learner and assessor.

All of these conditions are achievable when assessing RE, but none of them relate to the writing
of assessment criteria or the use of levelled scales. This might alert those concerned with the fair
assessment of achievement in RE to the need to concentrate not only upon the grading of
outcomes, or scaling, but also upon methodologies which are elaborative and effective. Nuttall
(pagei 55) comments:

With the benefit of hindsight it seems strange that so much effort should have been put into the
development and validation of general paper and pencil tests, when everything points to their

5
British:Journal.of ReligiousEducatiort23n;
 artificiality, their remoteness ... it seems likely that considerations of utility and reliability have
prevailed over considerations of validity.

It would be a danger if assessment of outcomes in RE were to replicate a situation in which

remoteness and artificiality, born of a need for utility or comparability or scaled reliability, were to
lead RE professionals away from a proper consideration of fundamental questions of reliability and
validity in establishing the evidence for pupils' achievements (for a useful general discussion of
reliability and validity in teacher assessment, see Gipps in Harlen 1994, 71-86).

The terminology of 'authentic assessment' also called 'performance assessment' has become
popular in the United States and in Western Europe where educators are concerned to develop a
range of approaches to educational assessment which take seriously questions of validity and the
kinds of criteria Nuttall advocates. A full analysis of performance or authentic assessment is
beyond the scope of this discussion (but see for example Torrance 1995). A simple description will
assist in relating these approaches to RE.
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Performance or authentic assessments relate to real life, not artificial constructs, require higher
order skills, not rote learning, take interpretation seriously and avoid trite answers, emphasise
learner engagement, rejecting 'teaching to the test', make open their success criteria, rather than
being secretive and embody professional flexibility rather than relying on over-rigid systems. To
elaborate this description, performance assessments have characteristics which can be described
in both positive and negative aspects as set out below.

Positively Negatively

are based on actual application or not based on a series of artificial 'hurdles' to

performance of what we want learners to be jumped in settings which are distant
be able to apply, synthesise, create or do from real life

require and examine the more complex and not achievable through mere accumulation
challenging mental processes, including and regurgitation of factual material or
analysis, communication, creativity, application of simple formulae in 'rote-
speculation, application, evaluation learned' ways

acknowledge more than one valid approach not based on any assumption that there are
or plural answers, taking seriously the role final and 'right' answers to all educational
of interpretation in human learning questions, available to either learners or
teachers

emphasise real products, unique outcomes, not over-emphasising the role of coaching
individual applications and responses, in and training in performance of assessment
which the learner is personally engaged tasks, not susceptible to the strategy of
'teaching to the test'

1SBritish Journal o f Religious. Educatiorr 23:1

 have transparent criteria and standards, not set up as professionally secret or
open to the learners themselves throughout controlled, not generating the anxiety for
the process, and open to the learner's learners which comes from hiddenness
interpretation

involve centrally the professional judgement not based upon the mere application of an
of the assessor arithmetic mark scheme in a rigid or
technical manner.

These authentic assessment methods clearly tend towards such strategies as:

• Performance-based assessment, where it is how learners perform in classroom or other

tasks, not examination room outcomes, that are assessed;

• Portfolios and Personal Records, which are collected over time as an evidence base for
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assessment; .

• Records of Achievement, which may include examples of work and agreed judgements
based on dialogue and reflection between teachers and learners about performance in relation
to criteria and outcomes.

Learners may be actively involved in selecting the tasks by which they produce evidence of
achievement, and may also have a role in assessing their own performance. The place of choice
and negotiation is central to the authenticity of the assessment. These assessment methods all
have some place in UK education, but have acquired neither the status nor the investment of
standardised assessment tasks (SATs), National Curriculum 'levels' or examination grades. Perhaps
the centralising tendency towards governmental curriculum and assessment control of the years
since 1988 is one reason why it is hard to find a big movement for 'authentic assessment' in the
UK. Perhaps the focus upon competencies in education in England prevents many teachers from
following their own professional judgements and developing more authentic assessment practice.

However in RE, marginalised by its 'basic curriculum' status, but also growing stronger at
grassroots level in the years since 1988, perhaps space can be made for the flourishing of such
authentic assessment. I judge this would be desirable if it meant that pupils' achievements were
observed and encouraged with clarity, rigour and validity.

SOME EXAMPLES OF AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES FOR RE

These five examples are envisaged in particular contexts, but the strategies could be used for
various age groups, and adapted to work based on a range of curriculum content. The emphasis
in much current English RE syllabus-making on 'learning from religion' in balance with 'learning
about religions' is reflected in these examples, and it is with regard to learning from religion that
the thinking behind authentic assessment provides a fruitful direction for those concerned with

British Journal of Religious Education-' 23:*

 assessing RE. The examples are selected to bring to the fore various aspects of the description of
authentic assessment given above.

These examples are, of course, selected from an impossibly broad range, but there is no reason
why, in general terms, the whole field of RE inquiry should not be open to these kinds of
assessment strategies and tasks.

First, an example of an authentic assessment task quite commonly used illustrates the case made
above. Pupils, as part of their regular RE work, visit a mosque. The teacher asks them to work in
groups upon their return to produce a guide to the mosque. This could be a well formed task,
requiring real life learning, returned to the school's contact people at the mosque as part of the
assessment. The 'success criteria' can be shared with, or even devised with, pupils in advance of
the work. A range of skills can be assessed through the task. For example pupils might be asked
to describe, demonstrate understanding, select photographs or illustrations, offer some interpre-
tation of what happens at the mosque, research Islam in the local and global contexts, write a
section under the title 'Please Respect Our Holy Place' (giving an opportunity for empathy and
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sensitivity), analyse the relationship between belief and practice they have observed or evaluate
positively what a local believing community may gain from the mosque. Pupils might be prompted
by writing frames, or by authentic examples of guide books to places of faith, to write individual
accounts of the spiritual atmosphere of the mosque, or 'outsider' accounts of what they learned
from visiting the mosque. Not all, but some of these skills could be demonstrated by groups of
pupils from the age of 8 or 9 if their work was well structured and supported. The task could also
be profitable for GCSE students. If pupils agree to complete a record of 'who did what' and all sign
it, then the teacher may be able to assess individual achievement iri the group context. While the
product of the task could be assessed against the 8-level scale, it is likely that a broader range of
achievement will be demonstrated. It is the teacher's professional judgement that will inform the
process of assessment and the feedback to learners more than the technical scale. Of course this
example can easily be adapted for visits to church, chapel, mandir, synagogue or vihara.

A second example, perhaps better suited to the secondary education context, asks pupils to take
the role of architects. It provides an example of an authentic performance assessment in a course
on inter-faith issues, in which teaching aims to give pupils opportunities to develop attitudes of
respect and sensitivity to those who hold beliefs different from their own. Such a course could also
increase and enrich learners' knowledge of the plurality, commonalities and distinctiveness of the
religious communities in their country, particularly with reference to worship and the sacred. The
assessment task asks learners to design a sacred space for a shared situation, for example a chapel
in a hospital, airport, prison or even school that might be used by members of different faiths, or
non-religious people. The assignment can specify that plans should be the result of research into
the beliefs and worship of believers from different faith groups and into issues of inter-faith
worship. Dialogue with believers and a record of their reactions will enable learners to consider
questions about artwork and symbolism, layout, use and other aspects of the way design,
function, belief and aesthetics are interrelated. Further development of the assignment might ask
students to devise an act of worship for the opening of the space they have designed. Or students
might choose to consider questions about the sacred and the variety of ultimate visions that

British Journa tor Religious Education: Z3rt

 function in the religions they are considering. This task requires open success criteria. It has a
strong performance element, but the role-play also provides for some distance and grounding for
the learners. The process of assessment needs to focus on skills, including application of
understanding to new situations, interpretation of meanings in worship, and predictions based on
analysis: What would believers value in the design?

A third example assesses how learners perform tasks which relate experience to analysis of sacred
text. Pupils, who could be in the 8-11 age range, develop a list of nine human qualities, virtues or
values which they consider make the main contributions to human well-being. This task, which
requires careful discussion and preparation, can be set in terms of 'My list of nine qualities for a
perfect world' to quite young children. Pupils will be helped in their articulation of their insight by
structuring the application of ideas in the task: If everyone put this quality into action, what
difference would it make to my family, class, school, town, country, world? Pupils then have the
opportunity to analyse the meanings of the apostle Paul's concept of 'fruit of the spirit' (The Bible,
Galatians 5:22) to Christian believers. The processes of teaching and assessment are interlinked,
and need to achieve some depth in exploring understandings of the biblical material. A structure
for comparison and application may help pupils to learn from religion. The assessment aims to
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produce evidence of the pupils' learning about and from Christianity, and to relate this to their
own life world. In spending time on an 'authentic' RE assessment task like this, opportunities for
spiritual development may be offered through the curriculum.

A fourth example requires learners to develop and demonstrate the skills of contextualising the
Jesus story. Aiming to develop skills of application, RE needs assessment tasks which provide pupils
with opportunities to speculate, to express their discernment in new contexts, to bring that which
is religiously distant or ancient into or close to their own lives and concerns. After a study of the
life of Jesus, which might include learning about accounts of nativity, miracles, teaching, conflict,
death and resurrection, pupils are asked to write a story under the title 'When Jesus came to our
town'. Incidentally, the art of Stanley Spencer, which sets the life of Jesus in his home village of
Cookham, Berkshire, is a powerful stimulus to the task. A sample of work from a class of 7- and
8- year-olds produced accounts of Jesus preaching at the crossroads, gathering the homeless from
the shop doorways, healing at the hospital, and being crucified in the churchyard. The task
requires pupils to engage creatively with both the gospel narratives and their own community, and
can provide rich evidence of children's understanding and interpretation for the teacher.

A final example involves making some authentic assessment of the life skill of interpretation, as
practised when meeting people of different faiths in dialogue. The task asks pupils to show how
far they understand some simple ideas from Hindu traditions. Learners are asked to select from ten
statements the five which they think are most likely to have been said by Hindu people, explaining
for each one why they chose it. Working with 14-year-old pupils, the statements might be:

1 God can only be worshipped in the temple.

2 The family of gods and goddesses help us understand more about ourselves, as well as
about them.
3 I believe god is one in three, and three in one.

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 4 There are no human gurus alive today.
5 When human history comes to a time of danger, then the divine will be seen on earth, to
rescue, defend and strengthen the good.
6 A flickering flame helps me to reflect on my life and on spiritual things, so I use candles for
worship.
7 There is a spark of god in every living thing, and when the body dies, the spark does not. It
never dies.
8 I go to the Mandir to worship Shiva.
9 To me, God is the power behind all living things.
10 I think Jesus was the only Son of God.

This task can be done in several different ways. Some answers are clearly wrong, but others could be
justified as likely Hindu sayings. The teacher's judgement will therefore need to take account of the
quality of justification offered for the pupil's choice. The process of assessment will include a dialogue,
written or spoken, between teacher and learner to explore the justifications and reasoning at work.
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These examples attempt to illustrate how authentic task setting, a focus upon formative purposes, and
giving a central role to the teacher's professional judgement in assessing RE can be brought together
in classroom practice, in line with the teacher's need identified by Black and Wiliam (1998, 16):

What they need is a variety of living examples of implementation, by teachers with whom they
can identify, and from whom they can both derive conviction and confidence that they can do
better, and see concrete examples of what doing better means in practice.

CONCLUSIONS

In the light of this discussion, two areas for continuing development of assessment strategies in
RE emerge. They are in tension with each other.

Firstly, the appropriation of the assessment structures of the National Curriculum for RE over the
period since 1988 has been both a source of challenging insight for RE, and a way to raise the
status of the subject. But RE professionals have - rightly, I have argued - distanced themselves
from the overwhelming accountability purposes of national assessment. The current development
of 8-level scales can be argued to be aimed at comparability with other curriculum areas, raising
standards of achievement and contributing to the improving status of RE. At the same time, the
development of 8-level scales cannot be said to have a firm research or academic base, and may
prove to contain the seeds of its own demise from its inception. There is likely to be wide use of
the RE scale, and in primary schools this may be without even the minimal training offered in other
curriculum subjects. There is a need for research into the effects of assessment based on 8-level
scaling upon teaching. Does it lead to teaching which is narrow or broad? Does it clarify
objectives? Does it function diagnostically? Does it raise the subject's status? Does it enable higher
standards in pupils' learning? Research is also needed into the effects of assessment upon pupil
motivation: Are there variations in the ways more able and less able groups of pupils respond to
the application of the scale to their work in RE?

British Journal of Religious Education 23it

 In tension with the potential gains of the 8-level scale, Nuttall (1995, 239) notes with reference to
'national norms'and national tests:

I believe that teacher assessment is bound to be richer, more varied and more comprehensive -
in short more valid - than any kind of externally set task or test, and that moreover only
assessment by teachers on a continuous basis can provide real support for learning.

There is a compelling case for RE professionals to develop practical, authentic, performance-based

approaches to assessment which firmly and clearly reject accountability and comparability
purposes and instead aim centrally to support progress in RE learning. The distinction between
achievement through performance and measured attainment is, I have argued, particularly
valuable when teachers aim to assess the rich field of learning from religion. Authentic assessment
approaches offer RE professionals a route to more challenging curricular activity, more motivated
pupils in RE and the more valid gathering and weighing of evidence of achievement. While there
are examples of good authentic assessment practice in RE, these tend to be based in individual
schools. Local Education Authority initiatives in assessing RE tend, for political reasons, to follow
a couple of years behind National Curriculum innovation. The time is ripe for further research and
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developmental work encompassing the purposes, practice and effects of assessment in RE.

REFERENCES

AREIAC (1998) Towards National Standards in Religious Education.

Bates, Dennis (1992) Reviews, British Journal of Religious Education 15(1), 55-9.
Black, Paul and Wiliam, Dylan (1998) Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment
(London: King's College School of Education).
Conwy Education Department (1998) Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (Conwy: Conwy County
Borough Council).
Christian Education Movement (1995) The Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education: Guidance from the
Christian Education Movement to Agreed Syllabus Conferences and SACREs (Derby, CEM).
Davis, Andrew (1998) The Limits of Educational Assessment (Oxford: Blackwell).
Dearing, Sir Ron (1994) The National Curriculum and its Assessment (London: SCAA).
Hargreaves, A, Earl, L, and Ryan, J (1996) Schooling for Change: Reinventing Education for Early Adolescents
(London: Falmer Press).
Harlen, Wynne (ed) (1994) Enhancing Quality in Assessment (London: BERA in association with Paul
Chapman Publishing).
Hertfordshire County Council (1995) The Hertfordshire Agreed Syllabus of Religious Education 1995
(Hertford: Hertfordshire Education Services on behalf of Hertfordshire County Council).
Langtree, G (1994) 'Daring to be Different: A Guide to the Dorset Achievement in Religious Education
Project (DARE)', Resource 16(2), 13-14.
Leicestershire Education (1992) The Leicestershire Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (Leicester:
Leicestershire County Council).
Lincolnshire County Council (1993) Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education (Lincoln: Lincolnshire County
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National Curriculum Council (1991) Religious Education: A Local Curriculum Framework (York: NCC).

British Journal of Religious Educaiian23S^!

 Nuttall, D, edited by Roger Murphy and Patricia Broadfoot (1995) Effective Assessment and the
Improvement of Education. A Tribute to Desmond Nuttall (London: Falmer Press).
Ofsted (1998) Secondary Education 1993-97. A Review of Secondary Schools in England (London: HMSO).
Priestley, Jack and Copley, Terence (1991) Forms of Assessment in Religious Education: The FARE Project
(Exeter: University of Exeter).
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (1998) Exemplification of Standards in Religious Education, Key
Stages 1-4 (London: QCA).
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (2000) Religious Education. Non Statutory Guidance on RE (London: QCA).
School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (1994) Model Syllabuses for Religious Education, Models 1
and 2 (London: SCAA).
Skemp, R (1989) Mathematics in the Primary School (London: Routledge).
SomersetEducation Services (1988) Awareness, Mystery and Value (Taunton: Somerset County Council).
Staffordshire County Council Education Department (1992) Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education
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Stobart, Gordon and Gipps, Caroline (1997) Assessment: A Teacher's Guide to the Issues, 3rd edition
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Torrance, Harry (ed) (1995) Evaluating Authentic Assessment (Buckingham: Open University Press).
Wandsworth Borough Council (1994 - but no date given on publication) Agreed Syllabus for Religious
Education (Wandsworth: Wandsworth Borough Council).
Watson, Brenda (1993) The Effective Teacher of Religious Education (London: Longmans).
Westhill College (1989) Attainment in RE (Birmingham: Westhill College).
Westhill College (1991) Assessing, Recording and Reporting RE: A Handbook for Teachers (Birmingham:
Westhill College).

Lat Blaylock is the Executive Officer of the Professional Council for Religious Education. He can be
contacted at Royal Buildings, Victoria Street, Derby, DE1 1GW, Tel: 01332 296655, Fax: 01332 343253,
Email: lat@cem.org.uk

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