Adaptive Comparative Judgement

"Humans are better at judgements when comparing two things against each other rather than absolutely."

(L.Thurstone, 1927)

Thurstone defined a mathematical way of modelling the chance that one object will 'beat' another in a comparison. Comparative Judgement was born.

It is the most reliable way to score essays or more complex performances. In addition, it is much simpler than marking and is known to reduce teacher workload.

Adaptive Comparative Judgement (ACJ) is a low stake approach to assessment. Several judges compare writing/work/competencies and then, using a computer algorithm, arrive at the Collaborative Professional Consensus (CPC) or rank order.  

ACJ is a highly reliable and valid way to assess subject competencies (like writing or performance) in education.

AssessProgress is the only Comparative Judgement for schools programme that uses Adaptive Comparative Judgement.

 Judging in our benchmarked sessions means that your students' writing will be primarily judged by teachers (approximately 20) from outside your school. Therefore, a wide range of teachers' professional judgements elicits your CPC.

Several judges from outside your school define the CPC order. It has less bias than associated with other CJ systems.

 It usually takes less than an hour to assess a year group's writing, initially 40 seconds per judgement. As your teachers use the system, their decision making improves, reducing time and workload to approx 20 seconds per judgement: the more judges, the less time needed to judge and the better the whole school CPD.

ACJ as assessment is low stakes and not seen as a test or assessment by the students taking part, as your students' work in lesson time is judged. Removing the criteria and rubrics usually used for assessment for a writing task, for instance, often liberates the writer. 

There are several benefits to be gained from using ACJ to assess subject competencies over using rubrics, frameworks or criterion assessments: Read on for more information

Halo effect and Order effect impact our decisions; this is reduced as you only judge, anonymously, work from other schools when taking part in our ACJ group sessions.  

Twenty other professionals have judged each student's work, not just the class teacher. As the teachers come from outside the school, you can be confident that there can be little disagreement with the outcome.

Teachers love being empowered to make professional decisions about the subjects they teach. More often than not, they'll agree with each other to make ACJ a highly reliable assessment.