Formative assessment happens throughout the learning process — class questions, marked homework, teacher comments, peer review — and its purpose is to inform both you and your teacher about how your learning is progressing. Summative assessment happens at the end of a course or unit and produces a grade. Understanding both helps you get more out of school.
What is formative assessment?
Formative assessment is any assessment whose primary purpose is to inform the learning process rather than to produce a final grade. Teachers sometimes describe it as "assessment for learning" — it is a tool to guide what happens next, not to record a fixed verdict.
Examples of formative assessment in secondary school:
- A teacher asking the class a question and selecting someone to answer
- A quiz at the start of a lesson to check prior knowledge
- Marked homework with written comments (not just a grade)
- Peer assessment — students reviewing each other's work against criteria
- Exit tickets — a question answered on a slip of paper at the end of a lesson
- Draft feedback on an essay before it is submitted for a final mark
- Teacher circulating during independent work and correcting misconceptions verbally
The defining feature is that the information produced is designed to feed back into further learning. A teacher who gives written comments on a marked essay expects you to read, understand, and act on those comments in your next piece of writing. That is formative assessment working as intended.
What is summative assessment?
Summative assessment measures what has been learned at the end of a defined period of learning — a unit, a term, an academic year, or an entire course. Its purpose is to produce a grade, a level, or a mark that represents achievement at a point in time.
| Summative assessment type | When it typically happens |
|---|---|
| End-of-unit test | At the end of each topic block |
| Annual school examinations | June of each year |
| Mock exams | Autumn/spring of Year 11, Year 13 |
| GCSE and A-level examinations | May–June of Year 11 and Year 13 |
| NEA/coursework marks | Submitted to the exam board at specified dates |
| BTEC unit assessments | Throughout the course, building to a final grade |
Summative assessments produce the official grades that appear on reports, on certificates, and in UCAS applications. Their function is to certify achievement.
How should you respond differently to each type?
Understanding whether an assessment is formative or summative changes what you should do with the result.
After formative assessment:
- Read the specific comments carefully, not just the mark
- Identify what specifically went well and what needs to improve
- Act on the feedback in your next piece of work
- Ask for clarification on comments you do not understand
- Use the result to direct your revision: a low mark on a formative quiz means that topic needs more work now, not in the final week before an exam
After summative assessment:
- Use the mark to understand your current level of achievement
- For exams, review your script or mark scheme to understand where marks were lost
- Identify patterns: are you consistently losing marks on long-answer questions? On particular topics? On specific types of question?
- Feed that analysis back into your ongoing study — summative results are themselves a form of diagnostic information for the next learning cycle
The mistake many students make is treating all assessment the same: receiving the mark, filing the paper, and moving on. This is particularly costly with formative feedback, which is specifically designed to be acted upon.
Why does most learning happen through formative assessment?
Summative exams reveal what you have learned. Formative assessment — particularly self-testing, teacher feedback, and retrieval practice — is where most actual learning and improvement takes place.
The Education Endowment Foundation's research on metacognition consistently identifies formative feedback as one of the highest-impact elements of the learning process, provided students are taught to understand and act on it. A teacher's written comment saying "your argument would be stronger with more specific evidence" is worth very little if the student reads it, shrugs, and does not change their writing. It is worth a great deal if the student thinks "what specific evidence could I have used here?" and makes that change in the next essay.
Self-generated formative assessment — testing yourself, comparing your answers to mark schemes, asking "what do I not know yet?" — is equally powerful. The research on retrieval practice shows that testing yourself on material is more effective for long-term retention than restudying or re-reading, partly because the test itself is a form of formative self-assessment that exposes gaps.
What is the relationship between mock exams and formative/summative assessment?
Mock exams are interesting because they function as both. They are summative in form — timed, exam-condition assessments that produce a grade. But in Year 11 and Year 13, their primary purpose is formative: to reveal where a student stands, where the gaps are, and what needs to change before the real exams.
A student who treats a mock result as a final verdict is missing most of its value. A student who treats a mock result as the most specific diagnostic information available — "I dropped twelve marks on the history source paper; here is what specifically went wrong" — is using a summative assessment format for formative purposes, which is exactly what it is designed for.
Frequently asked questions
Will formative assessment grades count towards my GCSE?
No. Formative assessments — classwork, homework, in-lesson quizzes, draft feedback — do not count directly towards your GCSE grade. Only summative assessments submitted or sat under official exam conditions contribute to your final grade. However, formative assessment indirectly determines your summative results, because it is the primary mechanism through which you build the knowledge and skills that examinations test.
My teacher keeps giving feedback but not grades — why?
Some teachers deliberately withhold grades on formative work to prevent students from focusing on the number and ignoring the comments. Research supports this practice: when a grade is given alongside comments, most students look at the grade and ignore the comments. When comments are given alone, students engage more deeply with what they need to improve. If you are unsure what level your work is at, ask your teacher directly — they can tell you where you sit relative to the expected standard without necessarily writing a number on your work.
How can I do my own formative self-assessment?
The most powerful form is retrieval practice: close your notes and try to recall the key content from a topic. Where you succeed, you are building memory; where you fail, you have just located a gap. Comparing your answers to a mark scheme after a past paper question is another form of self-assessment. Writing a topic summary from memory and then checking it against your notes is a third. Any activity that reveals the difference between what you think you know and what you can actually produce is formative self-assessment.
Is a school report formative or summative?
A school report is summative: it records your achievement at a point in time and is communicated to your parents. However, any comments and targets included in the report function formatively — they are designed to inform what you do next. Reading the comments section of a school report as carefully as the grades, and acting on specific targets, is using a summative document formatively. Many students read only the grades.
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