Seeking authenticity in high stakes mathematics assessment

This article derives from a scrutiny of over 100 national secondary mathematics examination papers in England, conducted as part of the Evaluating Mathematics Pathways project 2007-2010 by a team of eight researchers. The focus in this article is of the extent to which mathematics assessment items reflect and represent the current curriculum drive for increased mathematical applications in the curriculum. We show that whilst mathematics is represented as a human activity in the examinations, peopling assessment items may serve actually only to disguise the routinised calculations and procedural reasoning that largely remains the focus of the assessments, with the effect that classroom mathematics remains unchanged. We suggest that there are more opportunities for assessment items to illustrate mathematics in use, and we draw attention to ways of assessing mathematics that allow these opportunities to be taken.