Assessment is important, says
Mick Inkpen
– but not
everything that matters in education can be easily measured
I
was one of those lucky kids cut out for
school; good at most of those things,
capable of being taught within the
confines of institutional education.
So once the terrifying prospect of the
first day had been negotiated, I quickly hit my
stride and never looked back.
I got used to house points and praise for
everything – everything that is except my
handwriting. In those days dip pens in the
hands of left-handers like me were splatter
guns waiting to explode their payload of ink
across the page. But school reports were
glowing. I don’t think I became priggish. It
was just the way it was. Expecting to do well
became my normal; and so it must have been
with learning to read. I have only a vague
recollection of my first encounters with
books. One that sticks in the memory is of an
impromptu reading race with the other ‘best
reader’ in the class. Elizabeth Scriven and I
somehow got into a competition to see who
could finish our books first, and I still shudder
with embarrassment at the thought of the
two of us hardly bothering to turn the pages
before racing to the front of the class to claim
another book.
Of course as a child I was unaware of any
difficulties other children might be having
learning to read. But what a strange and
difficult skill it seems, especially if you first
encounter it in the competitive atmosphere
of the classroom. Abstract marks on the page
that seem at first sight entirely arbitrary
remain impenetrable to anyone without the
means of interpreting them. Yet they are key
to the rest of our learning, at least to the kind
to learning but I do occasionally encounter
teachers who complain about how the process
of assessment impinges on the teaching itself.
I feel ambivalent about it. I can accept that
all institutions need some external scale of
reference by which they can judge themselves.
And I can see that children also need to have
a developing sense of how they shape up in
what will become for them the increasingly
competitive experience of education and work.
But there are many aspects of development
that cannot be adequately assessed by placing
a tick in a box. In the end the quality of
teaching is far more reliant on choosing and
developing the right people than in refining
the systems within which they work. My fear
is that those aspects of development that can’t
easily be assessed will be sidelined in favour
of those that can. Perhaps if empathy had
been on the curriculum Elizabeth Scriven
and I might have been shamefully close to
the bottom of the class. At any rate it seems
to me that over-optimistic faith in systematic
assessment is likely to result in the
over-systemisation of teaching itself.
It must be that the kind of playfulness I
recognise as essential in my work, relying as it
does on sometimes going off-piste and being
counter intuitive, on pushing boundaries, is
also an essential part of teaching, just as it
is of life in general. But it’s something that
we engage intuitively. It’s not something we
can allocate or quantify. It’s impossible to
formalise its place in education let alone assess
its effect. Good teachers will always employ
it, but in a culture that subjects everything to
assessment what price playfulness?
“Iwant the prize of
learning to read to be
worth the effort”
MY LIFE IN BOOKS
Mick Inkpen
20
TEACH READING & WRITING
of learning that will qualify us in the eyes of
others to take our place in the world.
Without reading we don’t even enter the
race; our self-esteem depends on these
strange squiggles. So although my primary
aim has been to make books that entertain,
I’ve always had a weather eye on the business
of learning to read.
In truth I rely on my intuition to sense how
to write for children. Though it sounds a bit
precious, my guide is the child in myself. This
allows a certain amount of rule breaking. It
opens up the possibility of being really playful,
not only with the words, but even with the way
a book is made. That playfulness is the best
thing I can give to a child learning to read.
I want the prize of learning to read to be
worth the effort. I want their eyes to be on
the story, on the jokes, on the absurdities, on
page turns that reveal surprises. I want the
sheer pleasure of turning the page to distract
them from the difficulty of learning to read.
Some children come to regard reading as
a kind of unpleasant educational medicine.
The best picture books play an important
role in subverting that experience. And they
also provide something of an escape from the
experience of being assessed.
I don’t have much direct knowledge of
the way tick-box culture has been applied
“There aremany aspects of
development that cannot
be adequately assessed by
placing a tick ina box”
