Translating rich learning assessments into certified results and university selection devices

There are challenges in designing a set of high-quality processes in senior assessment and tertiary entrance that meet the needs of future senior secondary school students and future users of the certified results of learning assessments. Assessment and selection arrangements should look to the future rather than backwards to arrangements that might have existed in the past or that presently operate, unexamined, in other places. Teachers need to be convinced that the richness of students’ learning assessments will not be lost or transmogrified in any new processes for grading or ranking. A set of principles should guide the design of a new system — a set that gives pre-eminence to, but goes beyond, validity and reliability. This paper introduces the principles that guided deliberations in the recent review of senior assessment and tertiary entrance in Queensland, and describes, in simple terms, the design features of a new system based on the review’s recommendations.