Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of promoting other forms of assessment in schools alongside written exams.

Examinations are the best and fairest way of judging pupils’ performance. They have a level of impartiality that other forms of assessment do not have, with everyone being assessed on the same subject in the same amount of time. They are marked in the same way, and they are marked anonymously.

The independent qualifications regulator, Ofqual, was clear during the reform of GCSEs and A levels that non-exam assessment (NEA) should only be used when it is the only valid way to assess essential elements of a particular subject. There are a number of GCSE and A/AS level qualifications where part of the qualification is assessed through NEA, such as in modern foreign languages, and art and design. There are also a larger number of Key Stage 4 vocational qualifications, including Technical Awards, where NEA is used to assess practical abilities and competencies.