Cross-sector moderation as a means of engaging staff with assessment and teaching pedagogy

Abstract

This article investigates the benefits that cross-sector moderation events can bring to school staff and individual teachers. It focuses on a series of events held in one education authority over a period of four years. These events involved staff from every primary and secondary school within the authority and took the form of social moderation. The aim of moderation in the context of this article was to bring groups of teachers from each sector together and encourage them to discuss various pieces of pupil work and to award a curricular level to this work. It should be noted that the pupil work had already been awarded a curricular level by the class teacher, although this was not shared with the teacher moderators. From this research it can be seen that the benefits of cross-sector moderation include an increased trust from staff between and across the sectors in not only their own judgments, but the judgments of other staff in regard to assessing pupil work. Cross-sector moderation alone cannot raise achievement or attainment, but it can aid the development of a learning community amongst individual schools and clusters of schools that does appear from staff comments to have an impact on schools and teachers. The impact of this learning community extends to include discussions on teaching pedagogy employed, as well as resources used. This was not happening prior to this crosssector approach to moderation and demonstrates how moderation can aid the development of a learning community.