It has been an absolute pleasure to support Weston College, Westminster Adult Education Service, Essex ACL and ELATT this year through the OTLA programme. Broadly speaking, the focus of each of these projects was on assessment for learning (AfL), however each organisation worked within their own unique context to research and develop effective and engaging assessment strategies that met both the individual and collective needs of their learners.

Project teams from Weston and Westminster each focused on developing bespoke initial assessments for ESOL learners, helping ensure that both learners and staff teams were aware of learners starting points, sticking points and aspirations.

Project teams from Essex ACL and ELATT focused on developing remote assessment practices; Essex worked with maths learners to develop, trial and explore the impact of online assessment tools and ELATT explored participatory approaches to assessment design and facilitation that supported the development of positive staff-student relationships in online spaces.

Whilst each of these projects had different starting points and shared different perspectives on assessment, a key theme that quickly became evident was the importance of developing learner-centred assessment practices that enable actionable and supportive feedback.

I hope that you enjoy reading about these projects as much as I enjoyed supporting them, and that you are able to take inspiration from each in order to continue to devise and develop inclusive and engaging assessment practices within your own organisation or setting.

Assessment for Learning: Weston College

This project engaged with a nationally significant issue in prison education: how to assess the English ability of ESOL learners.

Assessment for Learning: Westminster Adult Education Service

This project actively engaged ESOL learners to stimulate intrinsic motivation so that they were able to understand and realise the relevance of maths in an applied sense, thereby enabling them to overcome some of the challenges studying the subject can pose.

Assessment for Learning: Essex ACL

This project will demonstrate the process to create a new online initial assessment tool to be used independently with all maths learners. We will share the challenges we identified and benefits of this process to both tutors and learners.

Assessment for Learning: ELATT

How can supportive tutor-learner relationships be strengthened, especially with online and blended learning? This project by ELATT devised a survey tool for tutors to elicit actionable feedback directly from learners.

Watch the group presentations at the final dissemination event by clicking play (to the right).

Access their full reports below.