BUILDING THE ASSESSMENT HOUSE:
REPORT FROM EXPERT SUMMITS ON ASSESSMENT AND ATTAINMENT IN RE
February and March 2016, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust
This report is written by Culham St Gabriel’s staff and represents what CSTG as a trust has learnt
from the expert summits. While it seeks to reflect the range of views and advice of the expert
participants, it does not claim to represent them in every aspect.
Executive summary
This report summarises the work of two expert summits on beyond-levels assessment and
attainment in RE. The summits were convened and hosted by Culham St Gabriel’s Trust (CSTG).
Invitees were those RE advisers and consultants known to CSTG who had been working on
assessment and attainment1. The two summits were highly participatory, and included reference to
the thinking and comments of primary and secondary teachers whose work had informed the
advisers and consultants present.
The summit meetings were strongly aware that there is an urgent need for a beyond-levels model of
RE attainment, and began to identify some of its key features, including: the possible use of Bloom’s
taxonomy; SOLO taxonomy; religious and theological concepts and iterative statements of
attainment, such as those being used in the Understanding Christianity materials; and the new GCSE
criteria. Key reference points were the aims and scope of content in the 2013 REC National
Curriculum Framework, and the Tim Oates critique of levels. Two approaches were looked at in
detail: an assessment approach based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy; and an attainment model
based on selected concepts. Other approaches, including skills, were also considered.
Those who attended the summits have reached some shared understandings of the context and the
nature of the challenges, which are summarised in the first two sections of this report, ‘Building the
Assessment House’ and ‘Hopes and Fears’. Recognising that clarity about key terms is crucial, the
summit has used language defined in specific ways in ‘Definitions of Key Terms’. Participants have
shared the ingredients of a successful beyond-levels model, which are spelt out in the fourth section.
At the end of this report, CSTG proposes a jointly published attainment guide that takes into account
the ideas and existing work of the summit participants. Recipients of this report are invited to
respond to this idea.
1
Participants were: Lat Blaylock (RE Today), Alan Brine (CSTG), Mark Chater (CSTG), Dave Francis (CSTG), Derek
Holloway (National Society), Verity Holloway (Salisbury diocese), Dilwyn Hunt (AREIAC), James Robson (CSTG),
Linda Rudge (LTL), Barbara Wintersgill (LTL). Apologies were received from Kathryn Wright (CSTG).
1|Page
1. Building the assessment house
CSTG recognises that the old house, that of two attainment targets and eight levels dating from
2004, no longer meets the building standards. Though uninhabitable, it continues to be used by
many RE teachers because nothing else is available. The new house, a beyond-levels, contentrelated model, has not yet been fully built. The uncertainty created by this situation is not unique to
RE, but it does have particularly damaging effects in our subject. There is an urgent need to work
together to agree the main design features, build it and enable RE teachers to use it. Part of the
challenge is that this work needs to happen while the everyday work of curriculum design in schools,
assessing and reporting, and the cycle of agreed syllabus writing, continues.
A car mechanic is about to undergo a major operation and remarks to his surgeon: ‘Really, what
you’re going to do is similar to what I do with cars, isn’t it? Open up the body, move things
around, put some new bits in, close it up again’. And the surgeon replied, ‘Yes, except you don’t
have to keep the engine running while you do the work’.
(Thanks to Lat Blaylock for this analogy)
The expert summits met with a common realisation of the need to understand each other's work, to
see the inter-connectedness between attainment, curriculum content and the purpose of RE, to
build a house that has enough empty space for schools, academy trusts and chains to furnish it
themselves – and to achieve this to the best quality and in the shortest time possible, making the
new model relevant to the overall design and purpose of the new national curriculum.
2. Hopes and fears
The first summit identified several ‘hopes and fears’ for RE assessment and attainment. Hopes
centred on the need to act quickly to provide clarity in a context that is already seeing a number of
conflicting models for assessment emerging. Such clarity was usually seen as taking the form of a
single unified model that assessed depth and breadth selectively, provided manageable
arrangements, and empowered teachers. Several people expressed the hope that the models
represented at the meeting would listen to each other and work together. There was also a general
hope that the assessment work would complement the conversation about curriculum reform and
wider improvements in RE thinking.
Fears focussed on a continuation of confusion and a flawed assessment system that would
undermine teacher confidence and the wider subject of RE, emphasising it as non-academic and
reducing it to personal development.
Hopes …

That we will have one clear, simple, manageable approach to assessment that RE teachers
will use

That the best from both presented models is used and the representatives listen to ways
in which they could develop their work.
2|Page
And fears …

Too much confusion so schools do not do any assessment at all, leaving RE confused,
marginalised and disillusioned

Teachers remain wedded to levels and have not experienced any form of assessment that
doesn’t involve levels

The definition of ‘concepts’ needs to be clarified further
3. Definitions of key terms
The summits worked with agreed definitions of key terms. The following is a summary of what was
agreed:

Assessment: finding out how well the pupils have learnt what has been taught, by making
judgements based on identified criteria.

Attainment: the measure of actual outcomes relating to what pupils know, understand and
do.

Expectations: the statement of the expected outcomes related to what pupils should know,
understand and be able to do.

Achievement: the extent of a pupil's achievement over time, relative to attainment
measures and to the pupil's starting point.

Progression: a curriculum design characteristic in which content is arranged so that ideas
and processes become more challenging over time.

Command: secure and competent knowledge and understanding as measured by an
expected standard of attainment, such as an end of key stage expectation; an indicator of
rich, deep and integrative learning. (The group felt that 'mastery' had different and less
appropriate meanings).

Big ideas: a small number of over-arching, connecting and unifying ideas that recur in RE. It
was recognised that this was an emerging idea, still in need of careful consideration.
3|Page

Concepts: a larger number of theological, philosophical and methodological ideas that can
provide an organising principle for content, and are characteristic of a particular religion or
world view (eg resurrection, samsara, ummah), or of the study of religion/philosophy (eg
hermeneutics, reason, revelation). Some colleagues are developing models in which pupils
make progress in developing deeper understanding a concept. Curriculums can identify
expectations in relation to specific concepts.
4. Ingredients of a successful beyond-levels model
Fully agreed: Not aiming for a comprehensive model, rather ‘teaching a person to fish’; simplicity
and clarity in a single ‘flow-diagram’ form; something that keeps teachers’ eyes on the core purpose
of RE, clearly defined; the ‘big picture’ of RE, not too many isolated elements; agreed core content
for the developed examples, within the aims and scope of the REC national curriculum framework;
examples of both big ideas, and concepts such as those developed by Salisbury diocese; end of key
stage expectations, based on spiral revisiting of specified concepts, with measurements of
knowledge and understanding defined in observable and evidential ways; an enquiry model;
supported by assessment processes that are alert to Bloom’s revised taxonomy, as developed by
LTL; flexible relevance to other subjects.
Still under discussion: relationship to evaluation in RE and to religious/theological literacy,
recognising that these terms are not synonymous and need further clarification; more definition
needed on big ideas, and their relationship to concepts; relationship to GCSE RS; how all this is
affected by any changes that might come from the REC commission.
5. Proposal: next steps
It is proposed that the summit participants, and the organisations/networks they represent,
collaborate in publishing a new guide to assessment and attainment in RE, similar to the Geography
Association publication2, and part of a toolkit of planning resources. The end result could appear
simultaneously on several RE websites, and could influence teachers’ planning through CPD,
conferences and paper publications.
Purpose of RE:
religious/theological
literacy, and how it relates
to some defined big ideas
The publication could offer a model looking something like the diagram below. Further explanation
and exemplification would be needed.
2
Aims
EY
KS1
LKS2
UKS2
KS3
NCFRE 1:
Knowledge
NCFRE 2:
Understanding
NCFRE 3:
Skills
Geography Association (2014) An Assessment and Progression Framework for Geography.
http://www.geography.org.uk/news/2014nationalcurriculum/assessment/#19464
4|Page
GCSE
Underpinned at classroom level by assessment practices based on the ‘sideways cone’
of Bloom’s revised taxonomy as developed by LTL, or by SOLO taxonomy
The table would be enhanced by:

Vision: why we are moving beyond levels, and what we are looking for. Includes definitions
of key terms.

Notes on the three aims, showing how they could be refined and contextualised to generate
understanding of specific religions/beliefs, and also of the nature and impact of
religion/belief. The core focus of an attainment model should be on religious literacy as
evidenced by understanding of concepts.

Guidance on: creating/delineating concepts: ‘here are some examples; here is why they are
concepts; create some of your own and test them.’

Clear statements of: successful attainment in sample concepts, defined at each key stage.
Concepts are quite likely to recur to relate to more than one specific aim of RE.

Exemplification in the form of ‘Spot check’ points at which a concept could be measured.

Exemplification of pupil work and teacher comment, showing how a pupil had demonstrated
the required level of knowledge, understanding or skill.

An emphasis on curriculum coherence, giving continuity between purposes, aims, content
taught, progression, and statements of expected outcomes.
Culham St Gabriel’s is very grateful to the colleagues who participated in the expert summits, and to
those who offered their expertise even though they were unable to attend. Having published this
report, the Trust will next commission further work to produce a shared document similar to the
Geography Association leaflet as part of a toolkit.
5|Page