You can't assessment your way out of a curriculum problem.

Education is supposed to be about curiosity, growth, and the joy of discovering new things. But somewhere along the line, we swapped that for league tables, grade boundaries, and endless assessments that squeeze the life out of learning. From SATs at primary school, right through to GCSEs and A-Levels, students are told, directly or indirectly, that their worth comes down to a number or a letter on a piece of paper. And the pressure this creates is enormous. For many children, especially neurodiverse learners, sitting in a silent exam hall for hours on end isn’t a measure of what they know or what they can do. It’s a measure of how well they can jump through hoops designed for a one-size-fits-all system. I once heard Lee Parkinson (ICT with Mr P) speak at the Bett Show in London. He showed footage of an interactive history simulator where primary children were completely immersed in the lesson, questioning, connecting, and really learning. When the video ended, he said, “You can stick standardised testing up your backside.” And he was right. That moment of genuine engagement, where children were buzzing with ideas, couldn’t be captured by a test score. But it was learning in its purest form. The obsession with assessment doesn’t just damage students; it stifles teachers too. Instead of designing lessons that inspire, teachers are forced to “teach to the test.” Creativity is squeezed out. Exploration gets cut short. And the message that filters down to young people is simple: if you can’t perform in the exam, none of it counts. A few years ago, I interviewed a teacher called Daisy on Teacher Talk Radio about this very topic, and she said something that resonated so deeply I had it printed on a T-shirt: “You can’t assessment your way out of a curriculum problem.” That one sentence sums up the whole issue. We keep trying to fix deep flaws in the way we design and deliver education by testing more, as if numbers on a spreadsheet will somehow make up for a curriculum that doesn’t meet the needs of learners. And let’s not forget the human cost. Children as young as ten feeling sick with worry about SATs. Teenagers pulling all-nighters and burning out before they’ve even left school. Neurodiverse learners forced into an exam model that actively disadvantages them. It’s no wonder anxiety, depression, and disengagement are on the rise. The truth is that exams don’t define a student. They don’t show resilience, creativity, kindness, or problem-solving. They don’t measure how a learner works as part of a team, or how they handle setbacks, or how they grow as a person. And those are the very things that matter most in life beyond the classroom. I’m not saying assessment has no place. We need ways to track progress, to check understanding, to give feedback. But assessment should serve learning, not dominate it. Until we shift that balance, we’ll keep crushing creativity under the weight of standardisation, and we’ll keep sending the message that the only thing that counts is a grade. Students deserve better than that. Teachers deserve better than that. And education deserves to be more than a numbers game. What would education look like if we scrapped standardised testing tomorrow?