An example of 'cricket score' assessment, taken from the 1970s

The ticks and crosses are for attendance or absence, the numbers are totals for marks gained on pieces of work. These could be aggregated to produce a class order for a month, a term or a year (normative assessment). 

At the end of a term, a pupil might have, for instance, a total of 452 marks, the ninth highest total out of a group of 30 pupils, but exactly what does '452' mean?

How much help is this in enabling us to determine what his or her strengths and weaknesses in the subject are, or in helping us to talk to parents at parents' evening, or in talking to individual pupils about what they need to do in order to improve in the subject?

It is worth noting, however, that as early as 1964, John Holt was writing about the need to assess for understanding, and the limitations of retention and regurgitation testing:

'I feel I can understand something if I can do some, at least of the following:

1.State it in my own words

2. Give examples of it

3. Recognise it in various guises and circumstances

4. See connections between it and other facts or ideas

5. Make use of it in various ways

6. Foresee some of its consequences

7. State its opposite or converse

This list ... may help us... find out what our students really know, as opposed to what they can give the appearance of knowing, their reallearning, as opposed to their apparent learning.'

John Holt (1964) How children learn, London, Penguin, p. 177.

Moves towards 'breaking subjects down' into 'components'

The 70s and 80s saw a move towards 'breaking subjects down' into 'components', in order to try to establish what bits of a subject pupils were good at and where they needed to improve.

Figure 1 shows that the history department has 'broken down' performance in history into 4 main criteria, which are designed to provide a profile of how the pupil is doing in the subject; to show where they are performing well, and where they are not doing as well.

Another fairly common policy in assessment (variations of which are still used today) was to give pupils a grade for attainment and a grade for effort, (usually on an A to E scale) accompanied by a general comment on the end of year report to parents: see Figure 2:

The 1980s were to see a move towards much greater disaggregation of achievement and progression in subjects