Formative assessment
Formative assessment is assessment used during learning to find out what students can and cannot yet do, so that teaching can be adjusted in response.
What is formative assessment?
Formative assessment is any assessment whose purpose is to inform what happens next in teaching and learning. It is defined by use rather than format: a quiz, a piece of written work or a question to the class is formative if the evidence it produces changes what the teacher or student does next.
The defining feature of formative assessment is not the instrument but the purpose. A low-stakes quiz used only to record a score in a spreadsheet is not formative; the same quiz used to discover that two-thirds of the class have the same misconception, and to reteach it the following lesson, is. The evidence has to loop back into teaching for the term to apply.
What makes assessment formative
Three things, usually. The evidence has to be specific enough to act on - a total mark rarely is, whereas knowing which question was missed usually is. It has to arrive soon enough to matter, which is why turnaround time is not an administrative detail but a determinant of whether assessment is formative at all. And something has to change as a result: a reteach, a change of grouping, a piece of targeted practice, or a student revising their own work.
Formative and summative are uses, not instruments
The same assessment can serve both purposes. A mock exam is summative when its grade is reported to parents and formative when the department uses the question-level breakdown to plan the next term. It is more accurate to talk about formative and summative *use* than about formative and summative *tests*.
Key takeaways
- Formative assessment is defined by purpose - informing what happens next - not by format.
- It needs evidence specific enough to act on, delivered soon enough to matter.
- If nothing changes as a result, the assessment was not functioning formatively.
- The same assessment can be used both formatively and summatively.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between formative and summative assessment?
Formative assessment is used to inform what happens next in teaching and learning; summative assessment is used to measure and report what has been achieved at the end of a period of study. The distinction is about how the evidence is used, so the same assessment can serve both purposes.
Does formative assessment have to be marked?
No. Much of it is not - questioning, mini-whiteboards, discussion and observation all produce evidence a teacher can act on immediately. Written work needs some form of marking to yield evidence, but that need not mean a grade; the useful output is the diagnosis, not the score.
Related terms
Summative assessment
Summative assessment is assessment used to measure and report what a student has achieved at the end of a period of teaching, such as an end-of-unit test, a mock or a public examination.
Assessment for learning
Assessment for learning is the practice of using evidence of what students currently understand to decide what to teach next, and to help students see what they need to do to improve.
Whole-class feedback
Whole-class feedback is the practice of reading a set of work, recording the patterns across it, and addressing those patterns with the class together instead of writing individual comments on every piece.
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