Effective Assessment and the Improvement of Education

A Tribute to Desmond Nuttall

Roger Murphy, Patricia Broadfoot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351401920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

Originally published in 1995, this volume brings together twenty classic contributions from the work of Desmond Nuttall as an educational researcher, thinker and policy adviser. A full commentary by two of his former colleagues who knew him well accompanies the text. They have set out to explain and explore the essence of his contribution to others. Much in the book is as relevant today as when the articles were written; put together they form a formidable collection. The book was published in the year after Desmond's death. It is hoped it will remain a fitting tribute to him. It will remind his friends of his classic ideas and brings together in one volume contributions that students of education may have missed.

Section 1
A Great Record of Educational Achievement

A Great Record of Educational Achievement

Desmond Nuttall had a remarkable twenty-six year career in educational research, primarily as a researcher but also as a manager, an administrator and a policy adviser. His central concern was educational assessment, and through this interest he was closely involved in work focused upon improving the effectiveness of schools, teachers and pupil learning.

His own educational progress had always been outstanding. Starting his formal schooling at the Parents' National Education Union School at Desmoor, he went on to be awarded a scholarship to Bradfield College. From there he won an open exhibition, in 1963, to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he gained a First Class Honours Degree in Psychology, followed three years later by a PhD. His PhD thesis on 'Modes of thinking and their measurement' (Nuttall, 1971a, see also Paper 1) paved the way for his life's work, which was clearly fired by his interest in both the assessment of educational achievements and the promotion of educational opportunities and systems which heighten the success of all learners, whatever their individual characteristics (see Paper 2). Indeed, throughout his whole career he managed to hold onto the worthy ideal of promoting educational excellence for all through improved assessment arrangements:

Many young people are very dissatisfied when they come out of the examination hall realizing that all they were able to do was a bit of one question and a small part of another. We want to give them an opportunity to feel that they have achieved something worthwhile. (Nuttall, 1987a, p. 381)

The UK education system has often been blighted by an artificial division between policy-makers, researchers and practitioners. Career routes often tend to trap talented individuals within one of these domains, thus exacerbating communication gaps that can be such an obstacle to the successful development of educational policies and practices. Desmond Nuttall was able to move freely between such areas, both in terms of the positions that he occupied, but also even more significantly in the networks he developed as he got alongside and worked with people working in different parts of the education system. In one of many recent tributes to him Harvey Goldstein has written that 'it was amazing how Desmond seemed to know almost everybody working in education, and not merely in Britain' (Goldstein, 1993). By many different accounts he was approachable, hard working, insightful, a team player as well as an individualist, and able to communicate his ideas in a way that made a wide range of people stop, think again, and in many cases change their minds. He was not just a brilliant researcher, but he also had a particular skill in relating research to practical problems, and in particular to the harsh realities of educational practice and the messy and cut-throat political dimension of fighting for change (Murphy, 1994).

Desmond Nuttall was always interested in teaching, research, and bringing about educational change. His career involved a number of moves often between quite different types of educational organizations, and yet his work, his interests and his basic passions remained with him in whatever position he was occupying. Immediately after the end of his own schooling he returned to school to spend a year teaching in a secondary modern, and then went straight on to the University of Cambridge for his first degree.

He then began his professional career in 1967 taking up his first post as a researcher at the National Foundation for Educational Research — a body set up in the early 1950s, in part at least, so that policy-making might be informed by relevant research. The commitment by the government to involving the educational research community in the discussion of policy issues was to endure until the late 1970s. For Desmond Nuttall it became, and remained, the abiding principle of his work and hence the first and central theme in any attempt to understand and assess its significance. At the NFER he quickly moved up through a number of research grades, becoming a Principal Research Officer and Head of the Examinations and Tests Research Unit from 1971 to 1973.

Desmond Nuttall's first move to another organization was to become a Senior Educational Researcher in the Schools Council Central Examinations Research and Development Unit in 1973. This body, which was closed down in 1983, is now looked back upon as the most significant representation of the three-way partnership between teachers, local education authorities and central government which characterized educational policy-making and implementation in England throughout the post-war period until the mid 1970s. The Schools Council was above all, a body that recognized the key role that teachers inevitably play in influencing the shape and quality of the education system. In recognizing the critical importance of high quality professionalism, it gave teachers a voice in national debates. It also conducted extensive research aimed at exploring how teachers' professionalism could best be mobilized in the process of educational innovation and change (Plaskow, 1985). The fact that Desmond Nuttall chose to work in such an institution is highly significant. It both reflected and reinforced his existing commitment to the development of teachers' skills as a key ingredient in the search for improved educational quality. He emerged from his involvement with that organization with the commitment to working with, and for, teachers to make educational research practical and useful in the classroom — a commitment that became the second defining principle in his professional life. In subsequent years, when he was much in demand as a speaker on in-service courses, as a consultant to local education authorities and as a writer in the popular educational press, this was a reflection of Desmond Nuttall's ability to engage with teachers in a way that was relevant to them and of his enthusiasm for linking research with practice.

Desmond Nuttall's early professional experience in these two very different organizations also resulted in a commitment to the third defining principle of his work — the importance of assessment as an instrument of educational reform. He became convinced both that it was assessment that held the key to promoting equal opportunities and hence social justice in education and that many aspects of current practice resulted in quite the opposite effect. Initially, Desmond Nuttall's concerns in this respect focused on the role of examinations and on the technical ways in which these might be improved to achieve greater equity and utility. His move to the Middlesex Regional Examining Board for the CSE in 1976 testified to his belief at that time that the kind of novel examining techniques which had become the hallmark of so much CSE work — especially school-based syllabus development and continuous assessment — were the key to success in this respect (see Paper 3). Although later developments were significantly to broaden and moderate this commitment, Desmond Nuttall never lost his early commitment to examination reform as a critical element in the search for both higher levels of quality and a greater realization of equality in the education system and this constitutes the third informing principle of his work.

In 1979, Desmond Nuttall moved to The Open University (OU) to take up a Chair in Educational Psychology. His heaviest involvement in using the distance learning apparatus of the Open University was to disseminate training for the new GCSE examination to teachers. Desmond Nuttall's commitment to linking research to both policy and practice and his enthusiasm for achieving changes through examination reform provided clear testimony to the three principles which were already characterizing his professional work.

But the period Desmond Nuttall spent at the Open University was also one of enormous ferment in English education (see Papers 4-7). It was a time when the old consensus between teachers, LEAs and central government was beginning to break down in the light of a growing realization both that the education system was failing significant numbers of students and that it was very hard to know how and why — or even to what extent — this was the case, given that so little was known about what was taught, to whom, when, and to what standard in the system as a whole. The establishment of the Assessment of Performance Unit in 1974 (Paper 6), which was designed to monitor national standards and, in particular, to identify instances of underachievement, is now seen, with hindsight, as a clear reflection of this concern. Equally symptomatic were the somewhat desultory attempts to find out what was actually being taught in schools via Circular 14/79 and the rash of documents issued by various statutory bodies at the same time (for example, HMI, Schools Council) concerning what a proper curriculum entitlement might be. Youth unemployment, the oil-crisis, the 'winter of discontent' of 1973 were all straws in a wind of change that was to challenge the easy consensus of the past and would result in radically new demands being made on the education system. Chief among these demands would be the need to raise the overall level of educational achievement nationally by raising the level of achievement of the young school-leaver and by encouraging more and more pupils to remain in education beyond the statutory leaving age. Other related demands which were to grow steadily in significance during the 1980s were rooted in the experience of national financial stringency and the consequent awakening on the part of both politicians and public that the education system must be accountable for the investment of national resources that it represented. Concerns for demonstrable efficiency and value for money gradually evolved during the 1980s into the more general preoccupation with the promotion and demonstration of quality which has become the hallmark of educational policy at all levels in the 1990s.

It was this policy context that provided the background for Desmond Nuttall's work during his time at the Open University and subsequently it was the canvas that united a number of more specific studies concerned with assessment at every level of the system — of pupils, of teachers, of institutions, of national systems and internationally — studies which in every case were informed in differing proportions by the same abiding three themes of Desmond Nuttall's work — making research relevant for policy-making and informing teachers' practice through new ways of conceptualizing and using assessment.

Desmond Nuttall's move to the Open University coincided with the period when assessment research issues ceased to be largely the preserve of examination boards and government research bodies. It was the time when the potential power of assessment as an instrument for exacting accountability came to be recognized. It was no longer primarily a selection device with attempts at reform being focused on the efficacy of examinations in this respect. The language of grades and marks, results and standards became the language of accountability, a policy tool which could be used to represent institutional and system quality. The covert practice of using assessment to manipulate and control the curriculum which had long been characteristic of English education became increasingly overt as the government came to realize the coercive power of 'high-stakes' assessment. The increasing prominence which was not confined to England but was typical of most of the Anglophone countries — had the associated consequence of opening up many new research opportunities in this field and of catapulting key researchers in this area — of which Desmond Nuttall was already one — into a potentially very influential role. In short, it was a time when the combination of new requirements which were being made on the education system, a new political ideology and a new conceptualization of the potential significance of assessment in that system, combined to produce a whole range of novel challenges in the field of assessment research.

The first of these for Desmond Nuttall was his exploration of the potential of other approaches to student assessment. His edited book Assessing Educational Achievement (Nuttall, 1986b), brought together a host of new thinking on this topic. Some of this thinking concerned the technical matters of assessment quality which had been so much a hallmark of Desmond Nuttall's work from the beginning (see Paper 12). More traditional concerns with validity and comparability became blended with issues relating to utility and how far different approaches to examining fulfilled the goals for which they were being used (see Papers 8 and 9). The work on the GCSE and the very different context of the vocational qualifications both attracted sustained scrutiny from Desmond Nuttall as he wrestled with issues of moderation, comparability and practicability. In particular, his seminal 1987 paper 'The validity of assessments' (Paper 14) both reflected a growing international concern with this issue at the time and significantly raised the quality of scholarly debate in this respect.

In 1984, however, Desmond Nuttall had bid for and won, joint responsibility for the national evaluation of government-funded pilot record of achievement schemes. His involvement with this project, spurred as it was by his interest in social justice and assessment reform, was the beginning of a new stage in Desmond Nuttall's work, an involvement which reflected the sea change which was to take place in the field of assessment as a whole.

The Pilot Records of Achievement in Schools Evaluation (PRAISE) project was to last five years. Desmond Nuttall's involvement in the detailed study of schools grappling with changes in their assessment policies and procedures and his contribution to the two influential reports which resulted from the project led him to explore the more fundamental implications of such reforms both technically (see Paper 10) and in terms of general, but profound questions concerning the relationship between assessment policy and the promotion of school quality (see Paper 13).

Early in the decade, Desmond Nuttall had begun to work in the area of school self-evaluation (Nuttall, 1981b), a field in which the research group he led at the OU was to subsequently publish extensively and prove very influential as the later collection 'Studies in School Self-Evaluation' (Nuttall, Clift and McCormick, 1987) was to demonstrate.

Another related strand in Desmond Nuttall's work at this time concerned the developing government interest in introducing teacher appraisal. Once again it was Desmond Nuttall who so typically sought to inform the debate from a research perspective (see Paper 11) and to integrate that debate within the larger discussion of the relative merits of formative and summative evaluation. The issues, as always for Desmond Nuttall, were practical ones — to generate research insights and understanding so that policy, and the goal that policy is ultimately intended to serve, of making education more effective, would be guided in the right direction.

Desmond Nuttall's time at the OU was a time of ferment for him just as it was for everyone interested in assessment. It was a time when new horizons were opening up when the government was actively seeking research input to guide their understanding of new developments such as records of achievement, teacher appraisal and school self-evaluation. When the old certainties concerning the role, purpose and potential of assessment were being fundamentally challenged, Desmond Nuttall was strategically placed to take full advantage of these opportunities in leading teams that carried out a programme of research that contributed significantly to the conceptualization and implementation of such developments.

Desmond Nuttall's move to the ILEA in 1986 again coincided with a significant change in the policy climate, a change that was to be marked above all by the 1988 Education Reform Act. Although the Act confirmed the status of assessment as a policy issue, it also represented a quite novel commitment to using assessment as the currency of an educational market as the driving force of the system on an unprecedented scale. Desmond Nuttall found much that was challenging in this new climate. He wrote extensively on the assumptions underpinning national assessment arrangements drawing on his extensive technical knowledge to critique both the conception and the practicability of the arrangements (see Paper 16) just has he had done many years before in relation to the APU (see Papers 4, 6 and 12). So significant were Desmond Nuttall's contributions perceived to be in this respect that he rapidly became regarded as an authority internationally on issues of national assessment, sharing his insights in the United States and Australia in particular and playing a significant role in influencing assessment policy formulation in those countries (see Paper 18).

Desmond Nuttall also found much to interest him in the much higher profile than before of international comparisons. His work over a period of years on the OECD indicators project resulted in a series of publications (for example, Paper 19) which include some of his most perceptive and novel contributions to assessment thinking. Yet despite his notable national and international success at this time, Desmond Nuttall was fundamentally at odds with the new development in establishment thinking. He was at odds with the crude use of performance indicators in league tables of school and local authority performance. His championship of the 'value-added' approach as a more just and meaningful representation of institutional achievement was a reflection both of his enduring concern for technical quality in assessment and of his equally long-standing concern with using assessment to improve education. Desmond Nuttall saw nothing in the punitive and misleading use of assessment information to inform a spurious educational market which was likely to lead to such an outcome. He became an outspoken critic of government policy, a spokesman for a profession overwhelmed by the impositions of an alien political philosophy but unable, often to articulate a response. Right up to the time of his death in October 1993, Desmond Nuttall was using his speaking and writing to articulate clear and realistic alternatives (see Paper 20).

At the same time, Desmond Nuttall's disillusion with government thinking spurred him to continue working on quite a different research front. Social justice is not a topic currently in evidence on the policy agenda. It remained, however a major theme within Desmond Nuttall's work as part of his overall vision of a more equitable society and of the key role of assessment in creating this. The research he instituted whilst at ILEA reflected both his own goals and those of that Authority. Both were equally unfashionable projects concerned to identify the relative achievements of boys and girls, different ethnic groups and different parts of the Authority revealed striking new insights and significant instances of underachievement. Research, which in other circumstances would have had important implications for national as well as local educational policy, but which with the abolition of ILEA, had little impact. By contrast, the well-developed tradition of school effectiveness research within ILEA (see Paper 15) also found a willing and expert champion in Desmond Nuttall. The question of how schools could be made more effective enabled him to draw on several decades spent refining his technical skills in research design and analysis, the capacity to integrate a range of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Section 1 A Great Record of Educational Achievement
• Section 2 The Papers
• Section 3 An Unfinished Pilgrimage
• A Bibliography of Desmond Nuttall's Major Publications
• References
• Index