Drawing on the latest academic research, and the innovative work being carried out in schools the QCA, on their website, have offered some very helpful pointers to improving practice. The recommendation is that to improve the quality of their assessment for learning, schools should review their approach to:

• Involving children more in their own learning;

• Modelling quality;

• Giving feedback to children on their work;

• Self assessment and peer assessment.

Involving children in their learning

Most schemes of work emphasise the need to identify clearly the learning objectives for a lesson. Indeed, lessons remain better focused when teachers share these objectives with children. In order to involve children fully in their learning, teachers:

• explain clearly the reasons for the lesson or activity, in terms on the learning objectives;

• share the specific assessment criteria with children;

• help children to understand what they have done well and what they need to develop;

• show children how to use the assessment criteria to assess their own learning.

Modelling quality

Assessment criteria are often defined in formal language that may not be clear to children, so it is important that teachers share with them examples of work so that they can see the standards they are aiming for. Children who study the completed work of others will develop their reflective skills and find out what it is like to take an active part in the assessment process.

These opportunities can include:

• encouraging children to listen to the range of responses to questions;

• showing children the learning strategies;

• showing children how the assessment criteria have been met in some examples of work from children not known to them;

• encouraging children to review anonymous examples that do not meet the assessment criteria, in order to suggest the next steps to meeting the assessment criteria;

• using examples of work from other children in the class highlighting the ways it meets the assessment criteria or standards.

Giving feedback to children on their work

Feedback is an essential element in assessment for learning. Teachers need to develop methods to interpret and respond to assessment information in a formative way. It is important that there are safe and secure relationships so that trust is established between teacher and children, prior to giving feedback.

Children benefit from opportunities for formal feedback through group and plenary sessions. Where this works well, there is a shift from teachers telling the children what they have done wrong to children seeing for themselves what they need to do to improve and discussing it with the teacher.

Therefore, giving feedback involves making time to talk to children and to teach them to be reflective about both the learning objectives and their work / responses.

Characteristics of effective feedback

• Feedback is more effective if it focuses on the task, is given regularly and while still relevant.

• Feedback is most effective when it confirms the children are on the right tracks and when it stimulates correction of errors or improvement of a piece of work.

• Suggestions for improvement should act as "scaffolding" ie children should be given as much help as they need to use their knowledge. They should not be given the complete solutions as soon as they get stuck so that they must think things through for themselves.

• Children should be helped to find alternative solutions if simply repeating an explanation continues to lead to failure.

• Feedback on progress over a number of attempts is more effective than feedback on performance treated in isolation.

• The quality of dialogue in feedback is important and most research indicates that oral feedback is more effective than written feedback.

• Children need to have the skills to ask for help and the ethos of the school should encourage them to do so.

Self assessment and peer assessment

If children are to learn, they need to identify any gaps between their actual and optimal performance. They need to be able to work out why these gaps occur and they need to identify the strategies that they might use to close the gaps. This is something that has to be done by the children and cannot be done for them by the teacher, although the teacher's interchange is crucial to the child's understanding of what needs to be done next.

In addition, children will need to:

• reflect on their own work;

• be supported to admit problems without risk to self-esteem;

• be given time to work problems out.

Teachers can play an important role here but peers can often take on this role and, by acting as a critical friend to a fellow pupil, s/he will almost inevitably enhance their own understanding as well.