Changing Assessment

Since the Delors report, education reformers have been working to create curricula that allow human beings to flourish. Schools should not only be places where we learn to be and learn to live together, but also places where the way we assess students valorises the diverse range of human gifts within them.

Yet, most schools remain locked in a 19th-century assessment structure that prevents young people from exploring the full variety and extent of their talents, forcing them to perform on a narrow, high-stakes track. When will this change?

In this remarkable book, Conrad Hughes gives an overview of the assessment problem affecting schools and creates a path to take to broaden assessment and potentially reposition the whole purpose of schooling. It is a brave, beautifully written treatise that anyone interested in education and assessment should read.

• Georges Haddad, Honorary President of Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Former Director at UNESCO (Education Sector)