EMC/GCSE 2010 Blog 8: Controlled Assessment in the Accredited Specifications

Controlled Assessment in the Accredited Specifications

What is controlled assessment?
Controlled assessment is a half-way house between coursework and exam work.

Controlled assessment breaks down into several stages: task setting; research and preparation; task taking.

The early stages are more like coursework, with students getting the question in advance and teachers able to use any of their usual preparation methods although this does not include commenting on drafts or giving detailed feedback to individual students.

However, in the writing up or ‘task taking ‘stage, students must work under close supervision. At this stage, students cannot have further help either from their teachers or from their peers and may not hand in drafts to be commented on (although they can use the time for their own drafting and re-drafting process if they wish). Any drafting completed during the Controlled Assessment session must be handed in with the final piece.

For more details on the basics, see our previous blog on controlled assessment:
http://www.englishandmedia.org.uk/blog/EMCGCSE2010_Blog2.pdf

Did you realise?
• Teachers and therefore students will know the question in advance.
Generally speaking the controlled assessment tasks will be released in April, for completion by the following June. You may share the task with students at any stage, but it is most likely that you will do this during the research and preparation stage. The task must be submitted in the same academic year it is set, i.e. tasks released in April must be completed by the following June. Tasks will change each year. Do check the arrangements for individual awarding bodies, particularly for the first cohort, as there are some variations in when the first round of tasks are being released, how long they are valid for and when they can be submitted.

• Although questions are set by the Awarding Body, there is flexibility for teachers to customise the question. The extent to which this is possible varies between Awarding Bodies and from task to task. For example, in approaching a Shakespeare task for literature:
- AQA and WJEC take a similar approach: the Awarding Body sets generic tasks and gives examples of how these tasks can be applied to particular texts. The teacher may use an example, or customise the question for the text they have chosen and the students they are teaching. In an example from AQA, the generic question might be ‘Explore the ways texts develop ideas about people in love’. One of the examples given is then ‘How do Shakespeare and Wilde explore for comic effect the absurdities of people in love in Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest.’
- OCR has two different types of question in their specifications: generic and specific. For the Shakespeare section, a choice of texts is given and, for each text, one task which asks students to compare a particular scene in the play with one of the suggested audio or film versions of that scene. Teachers are free, however, to get a different text approved by the Awarding Body, in which case students will answer one of the two generic questions.
- Edexcel sets a series of generic questions for Shakespeare. Teachers choose a text and an appropriate question. An example question might be: ‘Explore the ways in which a dramatic device is used to engage the audience in two interpretations (e.g. a reading and a performance) of the Shakespeare play you have studied’.

• In the preparation and research stages, the teacher can use all the methods they would normally use for coursework to prepare students for the task. This could include oral, group and drama work, watching the film, modelled, shared and guided writing and so on.

• Students have quite a long time for the ‘task taking’, or writing up stage. In most cases, around 3-4 hours. This should give them time for some re-drafting, although they must do this without help. For a helpful summary of the guidance on timing from each board, see our chart: http://www.englishandmedia.org.uk/blog/CAtimings.pdf

• Students are allowed to take in one sheet of A4 notes at the task taking stage. This must not include a one-size-fits-all set of teacher prompts, a writing frame, essay plan, or draft essay and must be handed in with the task. You will want to think carefully about what kind of thing might be useful to your students. A few suggestions: a mind map; ‘success criteria’ for the task, perhaps taken from a teacher checklist but personalised for that student; key quotes – even if they are allowed to take the text into a reading/literature task, it could be useful for them to have collected some quotes, to save time.

• Students can take the task at any time of the year and in normal lesson time, although they could also take the task in one block and in the exam hall. If they are to use normal lesson time, you will need somewhere secure to store work between sessions. Controlled assessment work must also be stored securely between completion and moderation. As they are not allowed any help, sessions do not need to be invigilated be an English teacher.

• Students can use ICT for the task taking stage. In practice this may be difficult, with problems around access to computers, disenabling forbidden tools (in some tasks students are not allowed Internet access, in others they are not allowed to use spell checks or thesauruses), and ensuring that students cannot access their work between sessions if the task is completed over several sessions. It might be more manageable to allow all students computer access for one of their tasks (remember you do not have to have all students taking the task at the same time and can split the time up into shorter sessions).

• No awarding body has been allowed to retain an option for an oral response to a controlled assessment task, either to reading or to the study of spoken language.



Some issues you may want to consider as you plan a controlled assessment task:
• The time recommended for preparation and teaching and the different levels of ‘control’ at each stage.
• The proportion of the course it represents.
• The assessment objectives for this task and how to share these with students.
• Whether individual teachers are to be free to choose their own task from the awarding body’s selection, or whether you will agree a common task for the department.
• Whether you will you allow any level of choice for your students.
• How to teach your students to use the A4 sheet of notes effectively.
• Links to other aspects of the specification (for example a discussion on a text in the preparation stage could be assessed for speaking and listening)
• How you might use multimodal texts. All boards encourage this in the preparation stage, and many of the reading tasks ask students to compare film, audio or performance versions with the written version of a text. Multimodal texts are also excellent stimulus for writing. Edexcel’s pre-release non-fiction anthology includes multimodal texts.
• Whether you will take advantage of any opportunities for students to make a multimodal response. Both Edexcel and AQA offer the option of a ‘multi-modal’ response in some controlled assessment tasks, for example students might choose images to accompany a poetry text and then write a commentary explaining their choices.
• What is the school policy going to be on students who are absent or who finish very quickly?
• Will students take the task in the hall/in their classroom/ with their teacher/ with an invigilator? In one block of time or several? Pros of the exam hall approach include: could use invigilators instead of English teachers; might make students take the task more seriously; momentum and support built up by all preparing and taking the task at the same time; less temptation for teachers to bend the rules on helping. Pros of the classroom approach include: classes can take the task at different times allowing resources to be rotated, providing an alternative time for an absent student to sit a task, and making computer access more possible; some students will perform better if the time is broken up into shorter chunks; some students panic in the exam hall; research suggests people remember what they have learned better if they are tested in the room where they did the learning.
• How will you organise access to: ICT; clean copies of texts; dictionaries and thesauruses?

Remember that colleagues in other subjects have already taught controlled assessment, and may already have solutions or have contributed to whole school policy on some of the tricky issues, such as how to deal with students who are absent.

The English and Media Centre will be running a course in the autumn term on managing the controlled assessment tasks.