Message from the CIEA Chairman

by Simon Sharp

First of all, I would like to wish all members a Happy New Year.

Now that the dust has settled from the General Election and the ministerial team are back at work at the Department for Education, we might start to get a clearer focus on the priorities of the new government. Given the outcome, a period of ‘steady as she goes’ seems the most likely direction of travel, with more emphasis being given to long-standing policies (such as strengthened Ofsted inspections, baseline assessments, pushing ahead with introducing the first T Level qualifications, more stringent regulation of awarding bodies via Ofqual etc.) rather than any radical innovations. It will be particularly interesting to see where the promised additional investment of public money will be targeted within the education and training sectors.

For the CIEA, we start 2020 with a number of new projects that we hope will see us strengthen our training provision and bring more assessment professionals into our membership. We are launching a collaborative membership project with the NAHT. Given the size and profile of the NAHT membership (approximately 28,000, mainly middle and senior leaders) it is an exciting opportunity to extend the reach of the CIEA within the profession. We will also be jointly promoting the CIEA’s training programmes to the NAHT membership, and thereby hope to increase uptake for our individual development courses (the Chartered Educational Assessor and Certificate schemes) as well as those aimed at institutional development. More details will follow of our work with the NAHT in future newsletters.

We are also looking to improve the content and coverage of all our training and development schemes to ensure they meet the current needs of the individuals and institutions we seek to support. For example, we are reviewing the ‘Excellence in Assessment’ accreditation scheme (targeted at schools) to ensure it reflects the priorities of senior leaders – particularly by addressing the issues raised by the new Ofsted Inspection Framework.

We have recently streamlined the online application process for new members, and we are continually looking to improve our website in order to ensure it meets the needs of members and is an informative source of information on current assessment issues.

I hope 2020 will prove to be a successful year for the CIEA and see us grow our membership numbers as well as increase our profile as an independent and credible professional voice on assessment issues.