FESTINA LENTE!
The key to achieving necessary educational change lies in the way we assess students, according to Dr Steffen Sommer.
“Education worth having, assessment worth doing”
That’s the target Steffen Sommer has for the world’s educational establishment. The Director General of Misk Schools in Saudi Arabia, Sommer has an exuberant, compelling style that sweeps you along. When it comes to the need for radical educational change, he is of the opinion that ‘urgent’ barely describes what is before us, as the pace of social and technological change accelerates. Our students, he argues, are already inhabiting and learning in a world moving further away from the educational ecosystem we offer them, which is becoming more irrelevant by the minute.
And yet, his 35 years of teaching and leadership experience in some of the world’s leading schools make him a realist. He knows change will not happen overnight: if you take on the establishment, you will need to plan meticulously, lobby persistently and choose your targets carefully.
Make haste slowly
Festina lente might best describe his approach to reform. We must follow the example of the Roman emperor Augustus and make haste slowly. It is all relative of course. He thinks we have got about three years to turn the educational world upside down and the most efficient way of doing this is simply to do away with the current form of academic examinations.
He shares the critique of many others. High stakes exams stifle the development of transferable skills and competencies. Memorisation is over-valued and essential behaviours that young people will need as they move from school to university and into the rapidly changing world of work, are woefully neglected as narrow academic judgements are made about what they have to offer.
Qualities such as collaboration, creativity, leadership, adaptability, self-direction and critical thinking are not rigorously assessed. Why, he wonders, are these assets not put under the same microscope as the ability to recall knowledge by today’s assessment systems? Knowledge, after all, is increasingly being shown to be ephemeral.
He argues that employers are deeply unhappy about how young people are being educated: a 2023 McKinsey report found that 87% of employers believe recent graduates lack critical workplace competencies such as teamwork and adaptability.
Keep change simple
His key insight is that if we are to change things quickly, we must keep things simple. That means focusing not so much on reorganising the curriculum or redefining pedagogical techniques. He thinks classical forms of curriculum organisation are not the main target: there is a lot to be said for learning how to think mathematically, scientifically, or historically – so long as the skills acquired are used together to solve real-world problems.
“Don’t change the subject content” he argues “change the way that students are assessed. And assess their developing behavioural qualities as they learn to use content and apply concepts . . . don’t just give out a summative memory test in the isolating environment of the exam hall after ‘learning’ has been completed”.
Here is the understanding of the experienced pragmatist. If you want mainstream change to happen for the greatest number of young people, the exam boards must lead the way.
“They are instrumental. What they decide to assess, the students will do and teachers will help them do it. If you phrase the rubrics for achieving the highest grade in the right way, students will catch on quickly and schools will drive them toward it.”
Call to action
Sommer is now throwing his substantial influence in the world of national and international education behind this effort. His call to action has come in the form of a White Paper issued on May 31st and posted on social media:
Assessment 3.0 – Aligning K-12 education with life beyond school
He is receiving a positive hearing from centres such as Stanford and Cambridge and he has an influential ally in the person of Lord Jim Knight, former UK Minister of State for Schools, and currently Chair of COBIS, the Council of British International Schools, of which Sommer is an honorary Vice-President.
But with the clock ticking there is no time to lose if his aim of achieving major reform within 3 years is to be achieved. And what will change look like? New forms of student assessment will become at least the equal of traditional examinations as a pathway to higher education and the world of work.
And why Assessment 3.0 if the dial is currently set at 1.0? It’s a deliberate conceit designed to prompt that very question.
“We have to go beyond 2.0! That’s gone. We have to get into the online world in which young people live and support them there. At present we are losing our influence as educators – they are learning fast in the spaces that they find online, teaching themselves, but not necessarily in domains that they will need for their futures: mathematics, languages, science and how to use different ways of thinking together in the right way to solve real world problems.
“Change assessment and all else follows”.
Realistic forms of assessment
Change need not be complex. The alternative forms of assessment are already here and practised widely. He foresees the use of digital portfolios, teacher observation and moderation, self-assessment, oral assessment and peer assessment, all methodologies which shift “the purpose of assessment from judging past performances to supporting future growth.”
And AI? Doesn’t this undermine the very premise of valid project work? Not, according to Sommer, if the right things are assessed.
“We should be looking at the quality not so much of the output as of the input in an AI supported piece of project work. There needs to be full acknowledgement of how AI has been used and the steps taken in the form of prompts given. What questions have been asked? What instructions have been given? Therein lies the rigour.”
He is under no illusions about how difficult it will be to get the exam boards to move. They are, by their nature, conservative, but it is not as if there has been no movement. Sommer is an enthusiastic fan of the Extended Project Qualification or EPQ, which is widely respected and involves an approach that must now move from the wings of educational assessment to centre stage, across the whole curriculum and for every age group.
Collaborating for change?
Sommer also sees a coalition of mutual support emerging between groups already taking the initiative: borrowing and sharing ideas has to be an important way of promoting change.
One thinks of course of the IB’s Approaches to Learning, John Taylor’s development of the EPQ, Sarah Fletcher’s work at the Girls’ School Trust and St. Pauls, Conrad Hughes and the Learning Passport emerging from Ecolint, Kevin Bartlett and the Common Ground Collaborative and Christopher Pommerening’s initiatives at LearnLife in Barcelona.
Different groups will have different ideas. It would surely be self-defeating to try and achieve a single, grand educational construct to be distilled from so many different ideas. But listening to each other, while considering different insights must be an important part of what needs to be done.
Meanwhile, Sommer will be focusing on Assessment 3.0 and seeking to persuade exam boards that they have a special responsibility to change things. Not sooner rather than later, but now. Expect a pilot to emerge quickly.
Dr. Steffen Sommer was talking to Consilium Education’s CEO and editor of International Teacher Magazine, Andy Homden in July 2025.
For more about Steffen Sommer’s and his work, see
FEATURE IMAGE: by Denise Jans on Unsplash
Support Images: AdrianHillman on iStock, monkeybusinessimages on iStock, Gerd Altmann from Pixabay & SolStock on iStock
