THE EVIDENCE FOR REFORMING ASSESSMENT

Dr. John Taylor looks at the evidence emerging from two recent inquiries in the UK and concludes assessment reform is the precondition for restoring student love of learning.
Concern

There is a significant concern in contemporary education circles that curriculum and high-stakes exam-hall assessment arrangements are a contributory factor to what has been identified as a loss of the love of learning.

In the UK, these worries find expression in the 2025 report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s Inquiry into the Loss of the Love of Learning. This suggests that the lost love of learning is a central and serious problem within the British education system, connected with the curriculum and assessment regime:

“… when learning is treated purely as a means to achieve exam results, its intrinsic joy and value are lost. Stakeholders argue that students effectively learn that learning itself “has no joy unless it’s validated by a mark scheme.” This erosion of intrinsic motivation is at the heart of concerns that the love of learning is being lost in our exam-heavy secondary system.” (APPG Love of Learning Report  p.20)

The Curriculum and Assessment Review

2024 – 25 was a busy year for high level educational reflection in the UK. In November 2025 the final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review (CAR) commissioned by the new Labour Government in July 2024 published its final report following widespread consultation. Many of those who responded to the call for evidence argued that there is a need to reform assessment in order to broaden it beyond the current model, dominated as it is by terminal examinations, arguing for the need to adopt

“interdisciplinary approaches combining creative and analytical skills, such as project-based learning that incorporates both STEM and the arts, as they believed this would make the curriculum more dynamic and relevant to real-world challenges”

On this point there is a level of consistency amongst the responses amounting to widespread consensus.

Outcomes

If these respondents had high hopes of radical reform, they were to be largely disappointed. The CAR Final Report argues that non-examined assessment can disadvantage certain groups of students and concludes that:

“It is right, therefore, that exams remain the principal form of assessment.” (CAR, p.136)

The evidence for this claim largely comes from a paper by Professor Gill Wyness, written in response to post-pandemic calls for the entire abolition of GCSEs. The paper points to evidence that coursework assessment may be subject to bias and notes that external setting and marking should therefore still be used.

Wyness does see a wider role for coursework, but as an adjunct to assessment by formal examinations:  

“Externally set and marked coursework should be used alongside exam-based assessment to a greater extent than currently.” (Wyness, Recommendations)

In other words – use more coursework by all means, but as a kind of backup.

Perhaps, however, we should be considering the very opposite. The CAR Report cites a further paper in support of retaining examinations, but which recommends that there should be greater use of coursework with external assessment arrangements used as the safeguard against bias.

AI, coursework and examinations

The second argument put forward in the Final Report of the CAR to justify prioritising externally assessed examinations is that generative AI has “further heightened concerns around the authenticity of some forms of non-exam assessment, making it increasingly difficult to ensure that submitted work is the student’s own.” (CAR, p.136)

However, no evidence is offered to support this point and there is no discussion of the extent of this risk, nor of the efficacy of possible mitigating measures, such as the use of oral presentations of work or teacher monitoring of drafts. On this specific point, there is a void in the evidence.

It appears, then, that the evidence provided within the Curriculum and Assessment Review Final Report, carefully weighed, actually points towards the need for significant assessment reform rather than, essentially, the maintenance of the status quo. As many respondents argued in response to multiple questions, and as expert opinion concurs, there should be greater use of a range of assessment methods beyond examinations.

Assessment and the love of learning

In the light of the evidence that students are indeed losing their love of learning and the strength of informed opinion (approaching consensus), favouring wider assessment reform what are we to conclude? I suggest the following:

  1. The reform of qualifications should be predicated on engagement with the challenge posed by the lost love of learning.
  2. The direction of travel should be towards significantly greater flexibility for schools, colleges and other providers to shape a curriculum that provides a better fit with learners’ interests, strengths and hopes for the future.
  3. A fuller embrace of alternative modes of assessment (e.g., projects, portfolios, skills building assignments, group work and oral presentations) offers scope to deal with the problematic narrowness of the current assessment system identified by multiple authors and respondents during the CAR process and in preceding reports.
  4. A reduction in the prescriptively induced by accountability arrangements could free up space for creativity and innovation, restore autonomy to the teaching profession and offer scope for ameliorating teacher recruitment and retention pressures.
  5. The promotion of models which allow the option of a more focussed academic core (e.g., 5 GCSEs) supplemented by inspiring and attractive vocational, technical and project qualifications provide an obvious and immediate step forwards.

Dr John Taylor is the Director of Growth and Partnerships for Highgrove Education.

He was a founder of the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) and has been involved throughout the lifetime of the qualification in supporting EPQ teachers and learners in the UK and internationally.

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