The four pillars of assessment: What does a focus on validity, reliability, purpose and value in assessment practice look like on the ground?

Samantha Franklin, Assistant Headteacher, Long Stratton High School, UK As Rob Coe (2017) describes, assessment is ‘one of those things that you think you know what it is until you start to think really hard about it’ (as cited in Kime, 2017, p. 13). When used well, effective assessment can enhance learning and raise attainment and yet too often assessment practices within schools are distorted by the external demands for assessments to be all things to all stakeholders (Broadfoot et al., 1999). This article summarises the critical evaluation of our own assessment practices, through the lens of the ‘four pillars of assessment’ and the subsequent changes that we implemented towards a more evidence-informed approach (Evidence Based Education (EBE), 2018). At the time, our assessment model was based on half-termly, high-stakes summative assessments, which each generated a GCSE equivalent grade/subgrade. These fed into a whole-school flightpath system, which assumed linear prog