The importance and challenges of assessment issues in ITT. What is there to consider if you are responsible for the assessment of history trainees?

It may be a cliché to say that those involved in the training of teachers are ‘the gatekeepers to the profession' but it is nonetheless true. Bestowing a ‘pass' and stating that trainees have successfully met the Standards for QTS gives trainees a licence to teach at any school in the age range for which they have been prepared. Although the judgement has to be ‘checked' or validated at the end of their first year in the profession, granting a pass potentially unleashes them on generations of children. In the words of Boyer (1990: 19) ‘There are poor teachers, to be sure, but one bad teacher is more dangerous than one bad surgeon, because one bad surgeon can only hurt one person at a time.'

One of the main challenges in terms of trying to perfect our arrangements for assessing trainees is that many strands of the Standards are not ‘all or nothing' achievements. Whereas it could be argued that people can either ride a bike or not, whether they can, for example, ‘communicate sensitively and effectively with parents and carers, recognising their roles in pupils' learning, and their rights, responsibilities and interests in this' (Standard 1.4) might be considered a more difficult and subjective judgement call. Many areas of the Standards for QTS are ‘multi-faceted': think how many factors are involved in deciding whether a trainee is ‘competent' or ‘good' at assessment, or ‘subject knowledge' (see sections 5.6 and 5.7 ).

One illustration of the difficulty of devising, adapting and developing really effective arrangements for assessing the progress and achievements of trainees against the Standards is the fact that in a recent round of Ofsted/HMI inspection, only ten out of 39 providers achieved a Grade 1 in this cell.

Considering the importance and complexity of this facet of history ITT, it is perhaps surprising that the range of literature is less developed and extensive than in other areas. The materials for this unit are derived from three main sources: Ofsted/HMI reports on this aspect of training, book chapters by HMI (see Baker et al , 2000 ), and interviews with experienced subject tutors.

Activity 5.1.1 : What can we learn from Ofsted/HMI reports on assessing history trainees?

Activity 5.1.2 : What is there to think about in the area of assessing history trainees?