Dutch secondary education is a multi-tiered system, and many students are placed in a single track in the first year (seventh grade) of secondary education. As part of the placement procedure, all sixth-grade students take an end of primary school test. Although these standardised attainment tests (SATs) are considered high-stakes tests, the…

Launched in late November 2022, ChatGPT, a large language model chatbot, has garnered considerable attention. However, ongoing questions remain regarding its capabilities. In this study, ChatGPT was used to complete national high school exams in the Netherlands on the topic of English reading comprehension. In late December 2022, we submitted the…

This study examines how Vietnamese high school leaders interpreted and implemented policy changes of the Vietnamese National High School Examination--a nationally standardized exam that determines whether students may graduate from high school and attend post-secondary education. The research found that at the national level, the policy is highly…

This report is focused on the uptake of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) subjects in England in 2023. Uptake in a GCSE subject is defined as the number or percentage of students at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4) taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE). The…

This research investigates the impact of class size on student performance in Azerbaijani public secondary schools, utilizing State Examination Center (SEC) final exam scores as a key indicator. Data from the Ministry of Science and Education is analyzed, covering approximately 80,000 9th and 11th-grade students in 4,400 schools. The primary…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented disruption to education systems around the world. In England, as part of the government's response to the pandemic, schools and colleges were closed and lessons were moved partially or entirely online. Furthermore, public examinations in June 2020 were cancelled, meaning that methods had to be developed…

Assessment is often described as the tail that wags the curriculum dog. Curriculum has featured more prominently than assessment in Irish scholarship. Drawing on relevant policy documents and interviews with senior National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) and State Examinations Commission (SEC) officers, and relevant documentation,…

This report is focused on the uptake of A level subjects in England in 2023. Uptake in an A level subject is defined as the number or percentage of students at the end of Key Stage 5 (who have entered for at least one AS or A level) taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE)…

The Black Lives Matter movement has increased attention paid to whiteness and education. This paper contributes to this attention by investigating epistemologies of Geography and their enactment in two 'multicultural' schools. Through textual analysis, lesson observations and interviews with GCSE Geography students and teachers, I inquire into the…

In England, GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) qualifications offered to students aged 14-16 were recently reformed. For mathematics specifically, the new GCSE aimed to be more demanding, provide greater challenge for the most able students, and support progression to post-16 mathematics. However, there have been concerns that the…

This paper describes the Berlin "Abitur" examination in the twentieth century and its written documentation in files. By the late nineteenth century, the "Abitur" examination was fully established in Prussia and with it a graduation certificate that was obligatory for university entrance. Thus, the "Abitur"…

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) has been for the last 35 years the most common qualification by which students' attainment at age 16 has been measured. The range and balance of processes by which the GCSEs' programmes of study have been assessed have varied over the decades, to include…

This paper addresses the question of how classroom-based peer assessment practices can be improved in relation to student interpretations of subjective assessment criteria. To achieve this, this research study considers the possible pedagogic benefits and implications of using a comparative judgement (CJ) approach to the peer assessment of GCSE…

Nationwide large-scale assessments (NLSA)--an example of cross-border policy mobility--manifest a proliferating means of governing formal schooling. In the Russian context, NLSA takes the form of a compulsory graduation examination called the Unified State Examinations (USE). In this article, we explore how a mobile policy instrument of the NLSA…

The practice-based research focus of this dissertation was the under preparedness of Liberian secondary school students for the newly introduced school leavers' external examinations and tertiary education. The problem addressed by this qualitative exploratory case study was that the successive decimation of the Liberian educational system…