Rethinking KS3: Developing a shared understanding of progress

As school groups rethink KS3 as a distinct phase - not simply preparation for GCSEs - a familiar challenge takes on renewed importance.

How can schools shape their curricula around their pupils and local context while developing a shared understanding of progress across the group?

This is not simply a question of choosing an assessment system. It is a question of how teachers develop professional understanding together: what they recognise as quality, how they interpret evidence of learning, and how they understand progression.

The opportunity is to strengthen that understanding without turning curriculum development into another exercise in compliance.

Rethinking KS3: Building a shared understanding of progress.

When school groups seek greater consistency, a natural response is to develop common descriptors, grading grids and tracking systems. These make expectations explicit and give people a shared language.

But a shared document is not necessarily a shared understanding.

Two teachers might read the same descriptor and interpret it differently. Equally, they might recognise important qualities in a pupil’s work that are difficult to capture in a checklist.

The question is not whether schools should have criteria or record progress. It is whether those structures are doing too much of the work, and whether teachers have enough opportunity to examine and discuss the learning behind them.

Rather than beginning with increasingly detailed descriptions of quality, what if we began with the work itself?

Why a shared understanding matters - the learning journey

While we wait for the new KS3 curriculum guidance we can begin to consider perhaps how a new approach might impact teaching and learning

In simple terms, how might the emphasis shift from “Can the pupil perform the specified task?”, towards “How is the pupil’s understanding developing, and how well can they think and work with this knowledge?”

For example, in history, that might mean moving beyond remembering an account of an event towards examining evidence, considering competing interpretations and defending a reasoned judgement. This is an approach that emphasises inquiry and understanding, rather than simply accumulating completed objectives.

Assessment therefore belongs within learning: it helps teachers and pupils understand what is happening and what to do next, rather than only recording an outcome at the end.

Shared standards need not depend entirely on increasingly detailed written objectives. Teachers can also develop understanding by examining learning, discussing its quality and investigating their practice together.

Our concern is not just whether pupils reach a prescribed destination, but the quality of the understanding they developed along the way.

Real work as the starting point

The approach we want to explore with school groups brings together two interdependent activities: comparative judgement and professional dialogue. Through comparative judgement, teachers evaluate anonymous pieces of student work side by side. Those comparisons generate an empirical rank order, creating a body of evidence for the group to examine.

Professional dialogue runs through the process. Teachers can compare together and discuss their thinking, then meet afterwards to reflect on the outcomes.

What did they notice? Where did their interpretations differ? Which qualities did they value, and why? What do the examples reveal about their expectations of learning?

The rank order is an output. The deeper purpose is to develop shared professional understanding through examining and discussing evidence. These are not separate ambitions. Teachers’ understanding informs their judgements, while examining those judgements and their outcomes gives them opportunities to question and develop that understanding.

Shared standards need not mean identical provision

For school groups, the ambition is not necessarily to teach the same content, in the same sequence, through the same activities. It is to build confidence in how teachers recognise and discuss quality and progression, even where provision differs.

That requires more than agreement about assessment. It also requires teachers to explore what their curricula are trying to achieve and what kinds of evidence would help them understand pupils’ developing learning.

Differences are therefore part of the discussion, not something to hide. Where teachers disagree, the useful question is not simply who is right, but what that disagreement reveals about their expectations, curriculum intentions or interpretation of the work.

The aim is shared understanding without assuming that every difference must be removed.

From shared sessions to everyday practice

A collaborative session should be a starting point, not an isolated event.

Within the proposed approach, the group’s comparisons can become a shared ruler: a reference built from the student work teachers have evaluated together. Through RM Compare |⚡ NOW, that ruler can provide an on-demand reference for further work.

The intention is to carry the understanding developed collaboratively into everyday practice, not to replace professional judgement with another score.

The examples provide something concrete to return to. The dialogue gives those examples meaning. Together, they offer a basis for continuing to examine how the group understands quality and progression.

An invitation to develop and test the approach

We want to bring teachers and student work together, combine comparative judgement with professional dialogue, and test how shared rulers can support everyday classroom practice. Alongside the outcomes, we want to examine the experience: what teachers learn, where differences remain, what time the process requires, and whether it provides enough value to become a useful part of their work rather than another reporting exercise.

Rethinking KS3 creates an opportunity to reconsider not just what schools teach, but how teachers build confidence in their understanding of learning.

The aim is not to standardise what every school teaches, but to strengthen how teachers understand progress together.