The recent Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper and the final report of the two-year Curriculum and Assessment Review contain a considered, coherent, and potentially potent collection of policy ideas to deliver improvements in national education and training across the levels.
However, it is crucial that these sound, but inevitably slightly abstracted or high-level ideas, are subject to expert modelling and solutions-focussed options testing (“system-based thinking and conceptual modelling”) to ensure that policy intentions can be effectively (and quite technically) translated into programmes and practices for national implementation and delivery that will be: viable, valuable, reliable, recognised, appealing, accessible, enduring, and sustainable. This should happen throughout, and certainly following, any formal consultation periods, and be able to investigate, model, and rigorously test approaches, which are informed by valuable, but not always consistent, stakeholder input.
We should seek to avoid the risks that can often arise at this point in development and implementation when colleagues across government, partner agencies, and the sector, under considerable pressure and increasingly focussed on delivery, can allow an insufficiently reflective – or even just slightly fragmented – policy momentum to develop. A type of fast-acting policy cement.
A momentum that is less amenable to expert and learner insights, experience, and accumulating evidence, which can allow seemingly minor but consequential technical errors and incoherence to be introduced, and which sometimes puts too much faith in the ultimate power of policy prescription, at the expense of more deliberative investigation, consultation, and ongoing engagement with specialists, stakeholders, and learners, about the real-life implications and inter-dependencies of policy choices being approved for implementation.
The process of translating ideas and aspirations into coherent, effective programmes, practices, qualifications, and assessments is extraordinarily complex and demanding (and iterative). But there are proven principles, clear precedents, evidence-based practices, and appropriate expertise that can be drawn upon to greatly increase the chances of success (and the sustainability) of any solutions to be introduced.
We must – firstly – fully acknowledge the challenging process of turning policy into practice, with a clear understanding of the risks and potential pitfalls when seeking to secure measurable and enduring improvements to standards, performance, and outcomes, which must be directly referenced to complex user and learner needs, interests, and aspirations.
Development and improvement processes need to accommodate essential, deliberative stages, which maintain a meaningful dialogue between initial objectives (i.e. Intentions) and actual effects (i.e. consequences), if they are to guarantee secure standards, genuine user value, recognition, widespread appeal, take-up, accessibility, and high-quality outcomes.
Development and implementation work requires continual (and clear-eyed) critique, evidence gathering, testing, and refinement, the genuine investigation of issues, implications, and interdependencies, and full recognition of diverse and dynamic needs across delivery contexts.
We must have the courage to listen, to learn, to adapt, and to improve.
Clear objectives and sound principles should be established at the outset, but these must be amenable to challenge and change, and responsive to actual experiences and accumulating evidence (at every stage).
Finally, we should always keep in mind that assessment is not a purely technical process – but equally – a human one.
Paul Johnstone Consultancy 