A digital learner profile

Rethinking Assessment is a UK based campaigning organisation. The aim of Rethinking Assessment is:

• To make the argument for change through case studies, analysis, evidence and thoughtful blogs.
• To start to provide some workable solutions, practical ideas and approaches that we will pilot in our schools and offer as real alternatives.

In June 2022,  Rethinking Assessment released a statement calling for the adoption of a digital learner profile “which will better reflect young people’s achievements and give their future employers more relevant information about their skills.”

The idea is that learners will create a learner profile while at school and be able to take it with them in life, topping it up as they go along. The creation of a digital profile by every student is national policy in Australia, they say, and there are regional and international prototypes being tested now.

They recognise that the  profile will be most useful if it has real currency – first with the students and their teachers, and then with universities, colleges and employers. 

In terms of assessment the aim is to rebalance assessment away from relying solely on high-stakes exams that just measure specific areas of subject knowledge, by developing a variety of ways to give value to the different components of the profile.

1. The building blocks 
2. Courses (single subjects, applied learning, interdisciplinary)
3. An Extended Project Qualification or equivalent project
4. The Dispositions Wheel (creative thinking, communication, collaboration)

This, they say, will be a difficult process which will take time to get right and Rethinking Assessment will be consulting widely particularly with universities, colleges, employers and others.

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