Whole School INSET, Formative assessment and assessment for learning, French International School, Hong Kong

During the summer 2016 vacation I travelled to Hong Kong to work at the French International School. This was arranged through my role as an Independent Thinking Associate. The school was looking for modern and relevant ways to develop a variety of teaching and learning techniques for their setting. A dual stream school across the full age range with multi-lingual students and a student body in excess of 2700, this was a big undertaking and one which clearly had an immediate impact with colleagues at the school as you’ll read below.

In order to ensure that my time with them was spent making the biggest possible impact I worked closely with the leadership team prior to arriving on the day. This saw a number of Skype sessions and a face to face meeting in Hong Kong to ensure that I was well prepared for the day with staff.

 

The day was a big success. With 5 distinct sessions across the day covering all aspects of formative assessment and assessment for learning, the impact on staff was immediate with a number turning to social media to share their praise about the various sessions.

 

 

Here is the direct feedback that I had from the Head of International Stream at the French International School, Hong Kong:

“Mark came to work with us for a ‘beginning of year’ piece of CPD. We had spoken about our context beforehand. It is a school with two distinct streams, French and International, spread across 4 campuses and consisting of 2700 students. We are unique in the French educational world and have particular features that need to be accounted for. Mark was delivering on assessment for learning, formative assessment to primary and secondary teachers, some native French speakers and some Mandarin native speakers. Here was where he triumphed. He got the mix right in several ways. He struck the right balances between doing and listening, theory and practice, able and less able (teachers!), novice and master, lo-tech and hi-tech, shallow dive and deep dive. He was able to engage the audience for the entire day and was still smiling at the end of the day! He takes his job seriously, but as it says on the independent thinking website education is too important to be taken seriously! Book this man!“

Ian Clayton, Head of International Stream, French International School, Hong Kong.