The current models of school assessments that are widely adopted and used to validate student progress actually had their genesis in a world that no longer exists.

At a recent Australian Heads of Independent Schools meeting (AHISA), I was privileged to hear from Professor Sandra Milligan who is leading Melbourne Metrics - The University of Melbourne’s quest to review and renew assessment models so that they are fit for purpose in what she referred to as the ‘AI Century’.

Professor Milligan explained that the first school tests, as we know them, were designed by Edward Thorndike at Columbia Teachers College in the 1910s. The idea of being able to assess students based on forms of standardised tests grew momentum and then, when the US military found application in their capacity to utilise testing to classify and place soldiers, significant investment followed.

This led to the field of psychometrics. Schools used these assessments to rank and norm students. They were based on the notion that good assessment was content driven, standardised and objective and was anchored in the principle that one should “teach what one tests and test what one teaches.”

Professor Milligan stated that by the 1980s these models of assessment were beginning to be seen as deficient. She said that there was a broadening of knowledge and it was becoming harder to determine what knowledge should be in the curriculum. It was also a time where things that were previously thought to be accurate, were proven untrue. This, of course, proliferated exponentially with the popularisation of the internet.

It was felt that tests of content did not move fast enough to adjust to the developments in society. Simultaneously, across the 1980s and 1990s there was the beginning of the view that there was more to education than recall-driven cognitive development. This was a time where character development was gaining prominence as an important endeavour.

Melbourne Metrics was established in 2023 to build on a burgeoning understanding that assessment has to do far more than the content-based testing that classifies students on their capacity to repeat what they have learnt.

It is a research unit which draws upon domestic and international school and university partnerships. Professor Miligan summarised that the goal of Melbourne Metrics was to “tackle the wicked problem that the assessment model buried in our DNA is no longer enough. We need a broader assessment that achieves more and acknowledges the changing world.”

The participants feel that schools need a new system which is robust but encompasses more skills than the old fashioned cognitive ones privileged in Thorndikian models.

She explained that the new paradigm will likely be based around the understanding that for students to thrive they need three capabilities. They need to be competent learners; they need to be members of a learning community who support them and who they support; and they need the autonomy to act for their own or their community’s purposes.

These principles draw from social psychology, neuroscience and embodiment science - which broadens the notion of cognition to consider both mind and body.

The early work undertaken by Melbourne Metrics include the development of The Elements of Competency, a series of 29 ‘building blocks’ of competence that holistically show a student’s capacity across important areas.

Overall, Professor Milligan was extremely optimistic that the new models would provide opportunities for assessments that would shift the focus on to student development by establishing a common language and focus that inherently understands that students are the masters of their learning and that they need to produce outcomes of their learning.  

She felt that there is an emerging range of assessments that will popularise in the coming years that are far more equipped to support learners, parents and schools in representing student success in an ever-changing world.

As a school that has always been focused on optimising teaching and learning and on adjusting pedagogy and curriculum to meet the developmental needs of our students, it will be wonderful to gain access to a rich suite of assessments that offer broader understandings of our students’ progress.