We Must Move On From Assessing the Past to Enabling the Future

Curriculum and Assessment and The Way Forward: The Future of The World of Education

There's a line early in this conversation that sets the tone for everything that follows. Dr Steffen Sommer, Director General of Misk Schools in Saudi Arabia, is explaining why he wrote his white paper, Assessment 3.0, and he says it plainly: we must move on from assessing the past to enabling the future. Many teachers, he argues, are already doing innovative work in their classrooms. But the assessment they're still tied to asks what students can recall, not how they can use what they learned yesterday for what they need tomorrow.

It's a challenge to how schools measure success, and one this interview takes on with unusual directness.

What this conversation is really about

This isn't a session about tearing up the curriculum. In fact, Dr Steffen's proposal deliberately leaves the curriculum as it is, on the basis that changing how we assess will change how we teach. Interviewed by Dr Helen Wright, he draws on more than 30 years of senior leadership across Europe and the Middle East, and on what he's seen at Misk Schools, where a locally developed diploma, validated by Cambridge University Press & Assessment, has been built around skills like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication.

The conversation moves from the frustration many educators feel, that we know how to develop thoughtful, adaptable young people and then squeeze it out of them to get them through exams, to a practical alternative: portfolios, presentations and authentic tasks that show how students think, not just what they remember. Along the way, Dr Steffen shares what Misk has learned through its research links with Stanford University, and why he believes exam boards have a pivotal role to play in making change affordable for governments and schools alike.

Inside the full recording, Dr Steffen is candid on subjects that many leaders are still circling. He argues that AI belongs at the centre of teaching and learning, with clear ethical guardrails, and explains why he sees asking the right questions of AI as a higher-order thinking skill. He shares what his team found when they tested whether AI could produce a top-grade essay from the exact marking criteria. He talks about why students should defend their arguments aloud, why the walls between subjects are becoming blurrier, and what's at risk if governments are slow to set guardrails for AI in schools. Dr Helen Wright brings her own perspective as a board member at the Dalton School in Hong Kong, pulling the discussion back to what all of this means for the ownership of learning, and for what school leaders can do on Monday morning.

And if you'd rather start with the headlines, Dr Steffen's white paper, Rethinking Assessment: Assessment 3.0, sets out the case in a clear, punchy format, covering the misalignment between assessment and the real world, the five features of the proposed approach, and a phased roadmap for putting it into practice. You can read it before, during or after watching.

Both the full recording and the key takeaways resource are available below — just pop in your details to access them.

Curriculum and Assessment and The Way Forward: The Future of The World of Education today is part of the Outstanding Schools webinar series. Featuring Dr Steffen Sommer (Misk Schools), in conversation with Dr Helen Wright.