School Leadership for Driving Assessment for Learning Reform: A Primary School Case Study

School leaders play a pivotal part in supporting and driving assessment for learning reform in schools. School leaders in partnership with middle leaders, teachers, students, and their parents drive a whole-school approach to enhance assessment for learning capacity. Research has shown that the role of school leaders is key to successful implementation of assessment for learning in schools (LaPointe-McEwan et al., 2017; Oo et al., 2024; Van der Kleij & DeLuca, 2023). Here, we report a Singaporean primary school experience of how a school principal in partnership with the whole school community members has been able to support a successful implementation of assessment for learning over multiple years. The following is the thematic journey of assessment for learning leadership that we have outlined via our conversation as an assessment researcher and a school principal.  

Overall, the journey is embodied through five broad themes including 1) preparing conditions for assessment reform, 2) building assessment legitimacy and credibility for teachers, students, and parents, 3) supporting coordination, 4) supporting emotions, and 5) promoting gradual release of agency to teachers to innovate. The themes were informed by our reading of the change framework proposed by Centola (2021). Together, the themes reflect the assessment leadership for learning and the roles that school community members play in driving this change.  

Theme 1: Preparing conditions for assessment reform 

Before embarking on what and the extent of assessment change to implement, school leadership had considered a few initiatives to focus on in supporting teachers’ assessment capacity. One area was strategic questioning and another effective feedback provision. Given the recognition that strategic questioning might need greater space, time, and effort to build at a whole school level, the principal decided to drive the change toward enhancing teachers’ capacity in providing effective feedback.  

To further prepare the conditions for change, the school cut a few things from the file check report to highlight the focus on what feedback has been provided and students’ recipience and responses to feedback. The report focused only on the following areas – teacher provided feedback at process level; student worked on the feedback and showed improvement in the next piece of work.  

Overall, in our conversation, we noted that the school leadership needs to be assessment literate for the success of the assessment reform. This resonates with the school leadership assessment capability framework (Charteris & Smardon, 2022).  

Theme 2: Building assessment legitimacy and credibility for teachers, students, and parents  

Centola (2021) defines legitimacy in that social approval is needed from the members involved in the buy-in for change. Credibility refers to individual’s beliefs that that adoption of change behavior worth the cost and effort. In this respect, school leadership needs to work with teachers, students, and parents to promote the legitimacy and credibility for the assessment reform. The following is an outline of processes that the school leadership undertook to facilitate this process for each key school community member group: teachers, students, and parents.  

Building legitimacy and credibility for teachers 

Prior to beginning the assessment reform, the school leadership consulted with teachers as to what aspect of assessment they are most concerned with. The school leadership and the teachers started by talking about what issues need to be prioritized in the school. The teachers were concerned that corrections and the amount of marking had not helped students in taking ownership of their learning. Therefore, the decision was to focus on process-level feedback.  

The school leadership then formed a task force with the school middle management team to get their inputs regarding the assessment feedback change plan and how the plan will work out. There were resistance and skepticism from some teachers whether the assessment feedback reform might be successful. To address teachers’ concerns, the school leadership in partnership with key personnel designed professional developments on assessment feedback, where teachers can share their feedback practices. The principal supported the key personnel in the professional development processes. In this process, the principal ensured that teachers ‘efforts were noticed, recognised and affirmed. 

Building legitimacy and credibility for students 

In the process of assessment feedback reform, there was some resistance from students because they were not used to process- and self-regulated level feedback. Students therefore asked teachers to give them only corrective feedback. The school leadership tried to bring students on board by persuading their parents. If the child goes back to the parents for social approval and if the parents are not on board, the child might fall in between the teacher and the parent. Upon the parental consent, the school leadership implemented strategies such as the Achiever Award, where the children with the most improvement in their learning progress would get it. Further, the students were encouraged to provide peer feedback, with teacher providing feedback on student peer feedback, modeling good feedback practices for students.  

Building legitimacy and credibility for parents 

In the face of resistance from parents, the school leadership adopted several strategies including persuading the parents that to shift the focus to student learning, total marks were not awarded for formative assessment activities. School leadership also garnered support from the Parent Support Group to encourage other parents in supporting the assessment feedback initiative. Further, upon parents’ request to see the rubrics, the school adopted an open initiative because the rubrics were for the purpose of assessment for learning. Drawing references from MOE’s policy emphasis on assessment for learning was another source of persuasion for the parents.  

Theme 3: Supporting coordination for implementing assessment for learning 

Coordination matters alongside supporting teacher literacy in effective assessment feedback practices. Coordination is key to receive social reinforcement for assessment feedback practices across teachers.   

The school leadership formed an assessment task force of passionate teachers for coordinating and driving the assessment change. These teachers were intuitive practitioners of assessment for learning but needed support to link it to theory. To support teacher literacy in the effective assessment feedback, professional developments were offered by these passionate teachers. As the reform progressed, the scaling for the change was taken to a higher level involving the middle management team in moving the reform forward. The principal prioritized attending the professional developments (10 to 15 hrs a week) to take on the consultant role.   

Theme 4: Supporting emotions and excitement for the assessment reform 

The school leadership recognized the significance of affirming teachers’ effective feedback practices as a basis to further support assessment reform for learning purposes. Specifically, the school leadership praised teachers’ effective feedback practices in the first two years of implementing the reform. The school leadership would also mediate to look at the sample reports prepared by heads of departments for the teachers. The school leadership would ensure that all these reports were submitted to them before it went back to the teacher. Through this process, the school leadership affirmed good assessment feedback practices based on a theoretical framework. Building on these small steps and in the fifth year of the reform, all teachers were willing to share their practices in the professional development sessions. During these professional learning sessions, teachers would get into different groups such as the readiness group that they are teaching. The groups would support collective thinking.   

Theme 5: Promoting gradual release of agency to teachers to innovate 

The school leadership can promote further agency as the assessment reform unfolds across the implementation years. In this case, the school leadership provided more space for key personnel in providing feedback to teachers on their effective feedback practices without the mediation from the school leadership. Further, key personnel were trusted to run the entire professional developments from the third year on. As teachers got more comfortable with these agentic spaces, the assessment innovations would follow. For example, the Math department built on marking codes practices from the English department to provide feedback to students. If a student had a tense error, the teacher would put “T”. Similarly, “T” would be used to indicate a transfer error in mathematics.  

Moving on, the school will delve deeper into student agency in feedback practices. Teachers will continue to innovate by fostering a stronger student agency by designing opportunities for students to take greater responsibility for their learning, and co-create learning outcomes/assessment items. This might include setting goals, monitoring progress and reflecting on their growth. The school will more intentionally tune into the student voices to further understand students’ learning experiences and perspectives on assessment.  

Conclusion 

In conclusion, the role of school leadership is essential in successfully implementing and assessment for learning reform. This case from a primary school in Singapore illustrates how school leadership working collaboratively with all members of the school community, can guide meaningful assessment change. Through strategic preparation, fostering legitimacy and credibility, coordinating efforts, supporting emotions, and gradually releasing agency, the school created a culture that values and enacts effective feedback practices. The thematic journey highlighted how leadership moves beyond direction-giving, involving emotional support, trust-building, and empowerment of teachers and students. Ultimately, the success of such reform depends on leadership that is assessment-literate, responsive, and committed to long-term capacity building. 

References 

Centola, D. (2021). Change: How to make big things happen. Hachette UK.  

Charteris, J., & Smardon, D. (2022). Leadership for assessment Capability: Dimensions of Situated leadership Practice for enhanced Sociocultural assessment in Schools. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 21(4), 1005-1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2021.1910715 

LaPointe-McEwan, D., DeLuca, C., & Klinger, D. A. (2017). Supporting evidence use in networked professional learning: The role of the middle leader. Educational Research, 59(2), 136-153. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2017.1304346 

Oo, C. Z., Alonzo, D., Asih, R., Pelobillo, G., Lim, R., San, N. M. H., & O’Neill, S. (2024). Implementing school-based assessment reforms to enhance student learning: A systematic review. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 36(1), 7-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-023-09420-7 

Van der Kleij, F., & DeLuca, C. (2023). Implementation of Assessment for Learning. In R. J. Tierney, F. Rizvi, & K. Ercikan (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education: Fourth edition (4th ed., pp. 147-154). https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-81