Assessment of, for, and as Learning

Short answer

• Assessment OF learning judges and reports what a student has achieved, usually against set goals or standards, at a defined point in a unit, term, or course. A final test, an end of unit project graded against a rubric, and a report card grade are typical examples.
• Assessment FOR learning informs teaching while learning is still in progress. The teacher gathers evidence about what students understand, then uses that evidence to reteach, extend, or change the next lesson. A short quiz used to plan tomorrow's lesson is assessment for learning, even if the same quiz could later be used for a grade.
• Assessment AS learning puts the student in the assessor's role. Students monitor their own understanding, judge their work against clear criteria, set a next step, and reflect on how they learn. Self assessment, peer feedback against a rubric, and a learning journal are typical examples.
• The three terms describe purpose, not task type. One task can serve more than one purpose, depending on what is done with the evidence and who acts on it.
• Formative assessment and assessment for learning are closely related, and summative assessment and assessment of learning are closely related, but the pairs are not exact synonyms. Formative and summative describe how evidence is used, while of, for, and as describe the purpose and the person who acts. Timing alone does not settle the question.

Why One Word Has Three Names

Assessment is one of the most used and most misunderstood words in education. Teachers assess, students are assessed, schools report assessment results, and families read assessment grades. Yet two people can use the same word and mean different things. One person may mean a final examination. Another may mean a quick check during a lesson. A third may mean the process by which a student judges their own work.

The phrases assessment of learning, assessment for learning, and assessment as learning were developed to clear up that confusion. They sort assessment by purpose: what the evidence is for, and who acts on it. That sorting matters because the same task can be useful in one role and misleading in another. A grade that fairly summarizes a term of work may be a poor guide to what to teach tomorrow. A quick classroom check that usefully changes tomorrow’s lesson may be a poor basis for a final report.

This guide explains each purpose separately, gives classroom examples, and shows how the three work together. It also explains the related terms formative assessment and summative assessment, and why they should not be treated as simple replacements for the three phrases. No single method in this guide is presented as a guarantee of higher scores, and nothing here is advice about a particular school, class, or test. School and district rules about grading and reporting vary, and the policies of the student’s own school govern in any specific case.

The One Question That Separates Them

When you meet an assessment, ask one question first: what will happen because of this evidence, and who will act on it? The answer places the assessment in one of the three groups.

Assessment of learning answers the question, what has been achieved? The evidence is used to make a judgment and to report it, usually against goals, outcomes, or standards. The audience may include the student, the family, the next teacher, or the school. The judgment is often recorded as a grade, a level, or a written report.

Assessment for learning answers the question, what should teaching do next? The evidence is gathered during learning, while there is still time to change direction. The teacher is the main actor, although students also act on the feedback they receive. The point is improvement before the learning is finished, not a final verdict.

Assessment as learning answers the question, what does the student understand about their own learning? The student is the main actor. The student monitors progress, compares work against criteria, notices gaps, and decides on a next step. The teacher’s role is to set up clear goals and criteria, model self assessment, and guide reflection, but the judgment itself belongs to the student.

Two further distinctions help. First, timing is a clue but not a proof. Assessment of learning often comes at the end of a unit, but a final task can also be used to plan future teaching, which gives it a formative role. Second, the task itself does not decide the category. A quiz, a piece of writing, a performance, or a project can serve any of the three purposes. Purpose is decided by use.

The Three Purposes at a Glance

This table is a starting map, not a set of rigid walls. In real classrooms the three approaches overlap and are often used together. The New South Wales Education Standards Authority describes them as approaches that are not necessarily separate and may be used individually or together, and that flexibility is part of their value.

Assessment OF Learning: Judging and Reporting Achievement

Assessment of learning is the purpose most people picture when they hear the word assessment. A teacher gathers evidence of student learning and uses it to judge achievement against goals and standards. The result is reported, often as a grade, a mark, a level, or a written comment on a report.

What it looks like

Typical examples include an end of unit test, a final examination, a major essay graded against a rubric, a science investigation report submitted at the end of a project, a music performance assessed against published criteria, and a term grade on a report card. In each case the work is judged as a record of what the student achieved over a defined period.

Assessment of learning can also operate at a larger scale. A school may use end of year results to review how a cohort performed, and a district may use standardized test results to compare schools or to plan resources. Those uses are still assessment of learning, because the evidence is being used to judge and report achievement, even though the audience is wider than one classroom.

What it is for

Its main job is to give a defensible summary. Families want to know how a student is progressing. A next teacher wants a starting point. A school wants to know whether a program is working. A qualification body wants evidence that a standard has been met. Assessment of learning serves those needs by converting a body of evidence into a judgment that can be recorded and shared.

That summary function also sets its limits. A single grade cannot show everything a student knows, and it cannot by itself explain why a student struggled. A grade on a final test taken in June says little about what to teach in September unless someone also looks at which questions were missed and why. Used alone, assessment of learning reports the outcome but does not improve it. That is why it works best as one part of a balanced system, alongside the other two purposes.

What makes it trustworthy

Because the stakes are higher, the quality checks matter more. Three checks, described by Earl and Katz and summarized in guidance from the New South Wales Department of Education, apply across all three purposes but bite hardest here.

Validity asks whether the assessment measures what it claims to measure. A mathematics test that mostly rewards fast reading measures reading speed as well as mathematics, and its results will mislead. A writing task that gives no time for planning may measure speed more than writing ability.

Reliability asks whether the judgment would be similar if it were made by a different teacher, with a different task, or at a different time. Clear criteria, scoring guides, and moderation, in which teachers compare judgments on student work, all support reliability. A single task, judged once, gives a thinner basis than several pieces of evidence judged against the same criteria.

Reference points ask what the judgment is compared against. A standards based judgment compares the work against published criteria. A norm based judgment compares a student against other students. A self based judgment compares current work against the student’s earlier work. Assessment of learning usually relies on standards based reference points: the work is judged against goals or outcomes, not only against classmates or against the student’s own past performance. Confusing those reference points is a common source of unfair or confusing reports.

Good assessment of learning also gathers more than one kind of evidence. The New South Wales Department of Education guidance recommends triangulating conversations, observations, and products: what students say in discussion or conferences, what teachers observe them doing, and what they produce in writing, performance, or projects. A grade based on a single test is more fragile than a judgment built from several sources.

Assessment FOR Learning: Informing Teaching While It Can Still Help

Assessment for learning is sometimes described as formative assessment. In the definition used by Cambridge Assessment, it refers to the purpose of using evidence to inform, and if necessary to modify, teaching and learning activities. The key phrase is “if necessary to modify.” Evidence that is collected but never acted on has not functioned as assessment for learning, whatever it was called when it was collected.

What it looks like

Typical examples include an exit ticket at the end of a lesson, in which each student answers one short question before leaving; a set of questions asked during class discussion, with students answering on small whiteboards so the teacher can see the spread of answers at a glance; a short low stakes quiz whose results are reviewed before the next lesson; a first draft returned with comments but no grade, so the student can revise; and a teacher circulating during group work, listening for misconceptions and noting which groups need support.

Notice what these examples share. They happen during learning, they are often quick, and their value lies in the decision that follows. If an exit ticket shows that half the class still confuses two ideas, the teacher reteaches that point the next day. If a quiz shows that most students have mastered a skill, the teacher moves on or sets extension work. If a draft shows a repeated structural problem, the teacher models a better structure before the final version is written.

Feedback that moves learning forward

Feedback is the engine of assessment for learning, but not all feedback helps equally. Useful feedback tells the student where they are in relation to the goal, what is strong in the work, and what one specific next step would improve it. Vague praise or a bare grade does little. A comment such as “good work” gives no direction. A comment that points to a specific paragraph, names what works in it, and suggests one concrete revision gives the student something to do.

Timing matters too. Feedback given while the student can still revise the work, or before the next lesson builds on it, has a better chance of changing the outcome than feedback delivered after the unit has ended. That is one reason teachers often separate comments from grades during a unit: a grade can stop a student reading the comment, while a comment without a grade invites revision.

Students also act on feedback, not only teachers. When a student reads a comment, revises a draft, and resubmits stronger work, the assessment has served a formative purpose for that student even though the teacher collected the evidence. The line between assessment for learning and assessment as learning can blur here, and that overlap is normal. The distinction is one of emphasis: in assessment for learning, the teacher’s decision about teaching is central; in assessment as learning, the student’s own monitoring is central.

Planning with evidence

Assessment for learning works best when it is planned, not improvised. A teacher who knows which misconceptions are likely in a topic can design questions that reveal them. A well chosen multiple choice question, for example, can include distractors that each represent a common error, so that the pattern of answers shows the teacher exactly which error to address. A teacher who asks only whether students understand, and accepts a chorus of nods, learns almost nothing.

This planning connects directly to study habits students can use on their own. Amberaisle’s guide to how to create a study plan shows how learners can set goals and check progress, and the same logic applies when a teacher checks understanding during a lesson: a clear goal, a check against it, and a decision about the next step. Similarly, advice on how to focus while studying and how to create a study guide helps students turn feedback into a concrete routine rather than a vague intention to try harder.

Assessment AS Learning: Students as Their Own Assessors

Assessment as learning is the least familiar of the three, and the easiest to misunderstand. It occurs when students are their own assessors: they monitor their own learning, ask questions about it, and use assessment information to guide new learning. The teacher still plays an essential role, but that role is to build the conditions for self assessment, not to make the judgment for the student.

What it looks like

Typical examples include a student checking a draft against a rubric before submitting it, and revising the weakest section; a student keeping a learning journal that records what was confusing, what helped, and what to try next; peer feedback in which students use the same criteria to comment on each other’s work; a portfolio in which a student selects pieces of work and writes a reflection on growth over time; and a student setting a personal goal, such as improving the clarity of conclusions in science reports, then tracking progress toward it across several pieces of work.

In each example, the assessment activity is itself a learning activity. Judging a draft against criteria forces the student to think about what quality looks like. Explaining a peer’s error forces the student to clarify their own understanding. Reflecting on a journal entry forces the student to notice patterns in their own learning, such as a habit of rushing the final paragraph or skipping the checking step in mathematics.

Metacognition: thinking about thinking

The technical term for this is metacognition: the ability to monitor and direct one’s own thinking and learning. A student with strong metacognitive habits notices when they do not understand, knows which strategies to try, and checks whether a strategy worked. A student without those habits may reread notes for hours without noticing that nothing is being retained, or may finish a task without ever asking whether it meets the criteria.

Assessment as learning builds metacognition deliberately. Success criteria are shared in advance, in language students can use. Exemplars show what strong work looks like and what weaker work lacks. Reflection prompts are specific rather than general: not “how did you feel about this lesson” but “which part of this problem was hardest, and what did you do when you got stuck?” Over time, students internalize those questions and ask them without prompting.

This is also where retrieval practice belongs. Cambridge Assessment notes that trying to recall information from memory, for example by answering a question or taking a low stakes quiz, strengthens later recall more than rereading notes or watching a video again. That practice is assessment as learning when its main purpose is the learning itself rather than a judgment or a teaching decision: the act of trying to recall is the learning, even if no grade is given and no teacher decision follows. Students who understand this can use self quizzing as a study method, not only as a test rehearsal. Amberaisle’s guide to how to study covers self quizzing and related routines in more detail.

Self assessment is not self grading

A common misunderstanding is that assessment as learning means students marking their own work and awarding themselves a grade. Self grading can be part of it, but it is not the point. The point is judgment against criteria, followed by a decision. A student who marks a quiz, sees a pattern of errors in one topic, and plans extra practice on that topic has engaged in assessment as learning. A student who simply writes a score at the top of a page and moves on has not.

Peer assessment works the same way. Its value lies less in the mark a peer gives than in the thinking required to apply criteria to someone else’s work. That thinking often transfers back to the student’s own work. Teachers usually need to teach peer feedback explicitly, with sentence starters and examples of helpful and unhelpful comments, or it can drift into vague praise or unkind criticism.

Learner differences matter here too. Students differ in how they process information, how much working memory a task demands, and how confident they feel judging their own work. Amberaisle’s article on what learner differences are explains why one self assessment routine will not suit every student, and why teachers often offer more than one way to show understanding. For students who think strongly in images, for example, sketching a diagram before writing an explanation can be a useful self check, a point explored in our companion piece on what a visual learner is (same wave link: confirm live or hold at build).

Formative and Summative: Precise Terminology

Readers often meet a second pair of terms, formative assessment and summative assessment, and wonder how they relate to of, for, and as. The short answer is that the two pairs overlap but are not identical, and treating them as identical causes real confusion.

Formative assessment describes evidence used to shape ongoing teaching and learning. Summative assessment describes evidence used to summarize achievement, usually at the end of a sequence of learning. Those are descriptions of use, and they map closely onto assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Cambridge Assessment notes the closeness of the match, and then adds an important footnote: although summative assessment is often viewed as synonymous with assessment of learning, and formative assessment with assessment for learning, this is not necessarily the case.

The reason is that purpose and timing can come apart. A test given at the end of a course is summative in timing, but if its results are used to identify topics for a follow on program, it is also being used formatively. A short quiz given mid unit is formative in timing, but if its score is recorded as part of a final grade, it is also being used summatively. What matters, as Cambridge Assessment puts it, is not the assessment itself but the use made of the information it gives.

Assessment as learning fits neither label neatly. Self assessment that strengthens memory through retrieval practice is neither summative, because no overall judgment is being formed, nor formative in the usual sense, because it may not inform any future teaching decision. It is a third purpose, and that is why the three part framework exists: two labels alone cannot capture it.

A practical rule follows. When you read or hear the word formative, ask what decision the evidence changed. When you hear the word summative, ask what judgment the evidence supported. When you hear of, for, or as, ask who acted and for what purpose. Those questions keep the terminology honest.

One Task, Three Purposes

The clearest way to see the difference is to follow one task through all three purposes. Imagine a class writing a short persuasive paragraph in a literacy lesson.

As assessment for learning, the teacher reads the first drafts during the lesson, notices that several students state an opinion but give no reason, and pauses to model how to add a reason and an example. The drafts are not graded. Their purpose is to change the next twenty minutes of teaching.

As assessment as learning, each student then checks their revised paragraph against a short list of criteria: a clear opinion, at least one reason, an example, and a concluding sentence. Students mark which criteria they met, choose one to improve, and write a note about what they will do differently in the next paragraph. The teacher may not collect these notes at all. Their purpose is the student’s own monitoring.

As assessment of learning, the final paragraphs are collected at the end of the week and judged against the same criteria, with results recorded and reported. The judgment summarizes achievement on this task. It does not, by itself, change teaching or help the student revise, because the task is finished.

The same pattern works in other subjects. A mathematics exit ticket can reveal a misconception for tomorrow’s lesson (for learning), can prompt a student to notice a repeated error pattern in their own working (as learning), or can contribute to a unit grade (of learning). A science investigation can be discussed mid project to redirect the method (for learning), reflected on in a journal to improve experimental design (as learning), or graded as a final report (of learning). A performance, a presentation, or a portfolio can play all three roles across a term.

The lesson for readers is simple: never judge an assessment method in isolation. Ask what it is for, who will use the result, and what decision it will change. A method that is excellent for one purpose may be weak for another, and that is not a flaw in the method. It is a reason to use more than one method.

Choosing and Combining the Three

No school or teacher needs to choose one purpose and abandon the others. A balanced assessment system uses all three, deliberately, across a unit.

Start with the learning goal

Every assessment decision starts with a goal stated clearly enough to judge against. “Understand fractions” is too vague to assess well. “Add fractions with different denominators and explain each step” can be assessed, because evidence can show whether a student can do it and explain it. Goals that are clear also make feedback possible: a student who knows the goal can judge their own distance from it.

Sharing goals and criteria with students is therefore not an optional extra. It is what makes assessment for learning and assessment as learning possible at all. A student who has never seen the criteria cannot self assess against them, and a teacher who has not defined the goal cannot give feedback that moves a student toward it.

Gather more than one kind of evidence

No single task shows the full picture. A student who writes well but freezes in timed tests will look different on a test than in a portfolio. A student who speaks confidently in discussion but writes slowly will look different in conversation than on paper. Triangulating conversations, observations, and products, as the New South Wales guidance recommends, reduces the risk that one format distorts the judgment.

Technology can help gather evidence, but it does not change the purpose question. A learning management system can collect quizzes, drafts, and reflections in one place, as described in Amberaisle’s article on what a learning management system is, and classroom tools can make exit tickets and peer feedback faster to run. The decision that follows the evidence still matters more than the tool that collected it. Similarly, teacher collaboration on moderation and shared criteria, covered in Amberaisle’s article on ed tech for teacher collaboration, supports consistency, but collaboration alone does not make a judgment valid if the task does not match the goal.

Keep the stakes proportionate

Assessment for learning and assessment as learning usually work best when the stakes are low. Students take risks, reveal misconceptions, and revise honestly when a wrong answer costs nothing but teaches something. If every classroom check is graded, students learn to hide uncertainty rather than reveal it, and the teacher loses exactly the evidence that assessment for learning needs.

Assessment of learning, by contrast, carries higher stakes by design, because its results are recorded and reported. That is why its quality checks, criteria, and moderation matter more, and why students and families should be able to see what a grade was based on. Low stakes checks and high stakes judgments have different jobs, and confusing them damages both.

Record keeping with a purpose

Each purpose needs different records. Assessment for learning records track individual progress against the learning continuum, so a teacher can group students with similar needs and plan differentiated teaching. Assessment as learning records belong largely to students: journals, reflections, and portfolios that show growth and changing strategies over time. Assessment of learning records document what each component measured, against which criteria, and with what supporting evidence, so that a reported judgment can be justified. Keeping the same thin record for all three purposes, usually a single score, serves none of them well.

Common Misunderstandings

“Formative assessment means ungraded, and summative assessment means graded.” Not quite. Grading is a recording decision, while formative and summative describe use. An ungraded task whose results change nothing is not formative. A graded task whose results also change teaching has a formative use. The presence or absence of a grade is a clue, not a definition.

“Assessment as learning is just students marking their own work.” Self marking can be part of it, but the purpose is monitoring and self direction, not awarding a score. Reflection, goal setting, and strategy choice are at least as important as any mark.

“Assessment of learning is only final examinations.” Final examinations are one example, but any judgment reported against standards counts, including a graded project, a performance judged against criteria, or a portfolio grade at the end of a term.

“More assessment automatically means better learning.” More evidence helps only if it is used. A school that tests frequently but never changes teaching, never gives actionable feedback, and never teaches students to self assess has added workload without adding learning. Quality of use beats quantity of tasks.

“Good students do not need assessment as learning.” Strong students often have strong self assessment habits already, which is part of why they are strong. Making those habits explicit helps other students develop them, and helps strong students tackle harder material where their old habits may fail. Lifelong learning depends on the same skill: judging one’s own understanding without a teacher present. Amberaisle’s guide to how to become a lifelong learner treats self monitoring as a core adult skill, not only a classroom routine.

“Feedback means telling students what they got wrong.” Correction alone rarely changes future performance. Feedback that names the goal, identifies a strength, and gives one specific next step is more useful than a list of errors, and feedback a student can act on before the work is finished is more useful than feedback delivered after it.

For Students and Families: Reading Assessment Results

Students and families usually meet assessment of learning most directly, in grades and reports. A few general questions help make sense of those results.

First, what was judged? A grade in a subject may combine tests, projects, homework, and participation, or it may reflect a single examination. Knowing the mix helps a family judge what the grade does and does not show.

Second, against what standard? A grade that compares a student against published criteria means something different from a grade that ranks students against each other. If a report is unclear on this point, asking the school for the criteria or the rubric is reasonable.

Third, what is the next step? A report that only states a level gives little guidance. A report or conversation that also names one strength and one area to work on gives the student something to do. Where a school provides that detail, it is worth reading closely. Where it does not, a student can still ask a teacher which part of the work most needs attention, and can use study routines such as a personal study plan to act on the answer.

Fourth, what does a single result not show? One test on one day can be affected by illness, anxiety, unfamiliar format, or a single misunderstood question. That is why balanced systems use several pieces of evidence, and why one disappointing result should not be read as a final statement about ability. Equally, one strong result does not guarantee mastery of everything in a subject. Patterns across several assessments are more informative than any single score.

Families can also support assessment as learning at home without taking over the judgment. Asking a student to explain what they are working on, what they found hard, and what they plan to try next mirrors the reflection routines used in class. Asking only about the grade reinforces the idea that the grade is the whole point, when the learning behind it matters at least as much.

For Teachers: A Simple Workflow

Teachers do not need a new system to use all three purposes. A simple workflow across a unit covers most of it.

Before the unit, define the goals and the criteria in student friendly language, and decide which evidence will serve each purpose. Which checks will inform teaching? Which routines will help students self assess? Which final evidence will support the reported judgment?

During the unit, run short checks often, act visibly on what they show, and tell students what changed because of their responses. When students see that an exit ticket led to a reteaching session, they take the next exit ticket seriously. When checks disappear into a mark book without consequence, students soon treat them as busywork.

Also during the unit, build self assessment into ordinary work rather than adding it as a separate activity. A two minute check against criteria before submission, a reflection sentence at the end of a task, or a peer comment using the same criteria all take little time once they are routine.

At the end of the unit, judge the final evidence against the same criteria students have been using all along. There should be no surprise standard. A student who has self assessed against criteria all term should recognize the basis of the final judgment, even if they disagree with a particular mark.

After the unit, use the assessment of learning evidence formatively at the program level: which topics were widely misunderstood, which tasks worked well, and what should change next time the unit is taught. A final judgment for one cohort becomes assessment for learning for the next, when it changes teaching. That reuse is legitimate and valuable, provided the original judgment was sound.

Teacher quality in this area is partly about habits, not only knowledge. Amberaisle’s article on the qualities of a good teacher includes clear feedback and attention to student progress among its themes, and those habits show up daily in how assessment evidence is used, not only in how it is collected.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between assessment of, for, and as learning in one sentence each?

Assessment of learning judges and reports achievement against goals or standards. Assessment for learning uses evidence during learning to change teaching. Assessment as learning is when students monitor their own learning, judge their work against criteria, and decide their next step.

Is assessment for learning the same as formative assessment?

Closely related, but not exactly the same. Formative assessment describes evidence used to shape ongoing teaching and learning, while assessment for learning describes the purpose of informing teaching. In practice the terms are often used interchangeably, but Cambridge Assessment cautions that the match is not exact, because a task’s timing and its use can differ. The safest approach is to state the purpose and the decision the evidence will change, rather than relying on the label alone.

Is assessment of learning the same as summative assessment?

Again, closely related but not exactly identical. Summative assessment describes evidence used to summarize achievement, usually at the end of a sequence of learning, while assessment of learning describes the purpose of judging and reporting achievement. Most assessment of learning is summative in timing, but a final task can also be used formatively if its results change future teaching.

Can one test be all three at once?

Yes, in sequence, though rarely at the same moment. A test taken mid unit can inform teaching (for learning), prompt a student to notice a gap and plan revision (as learning), and later contribute to a reported grade (of learning). The category depends on what is done with the result at each stage. A single result can serve more than one purpose, but only if each use actually happens.

Does assessment as learning mean students decide their own grades?

No. Students judge their work against criteria and decide next steps, but the reported grade in assessment of learning remains the teacher’s professional judgment, based on evidence and criteria. Self assessment informs learning; it does not replace teacher judgment in reporting.

How can a student practice assessment as learning on their own?

Use clear criteria before starting, check work against those criteria before submitting, keep a short note of what was hard and what helped, and use self quizzing rather than rereading when revising. After a marked task, look for patterns in errors rather than only the score, and set one specific goal for the next task. These routines are study skills as much as assessment skills, and guides on creating a study plan and a study guide show how to build them into a weekly routine.

Why do teachers use low stakes quizzes if they do not count toward grades?

Because the attempt to recall strengthens memory, and because the pattern of answers shows the teacher and the student what needs more work. A quiz that counts for nothing can still teach a great deal, provided someone acts on what it reveals. If neither teacher nor student uses the result, the quiz has not served any of the three purposes well.

How should a school balance the three purposes?

By planning all three across a unit rather than relying on one. Short checks during learning inform teaching, self assessment routines build student independence, and final judgments against clear criteria provide trustworthy reports. If any one purpose dominates, the system tilts: all final judgment with no feedback leaves students without guidance, all checking with no reporting leaves families without a summary, and all self assessment with no teacher judgment leaves reports without a defensible basis.

Sources & references

• Cambridge Assessment Network and Research, James Beadle, "What and why do we assess in the classroom?" (published 10 January 2025, updated 19 January 2026): summative assessment characterized as assessment of learning, formative assessment characterized as assessment for learning, assessment as learning as acts of assessment that are also acts of learning, retrieval practice, and the footnote that formative and summative are not necessarily synonymous with assessment for and of learning.
• New South Wales Department of Education, "Actions to take" (aspects of assessment guidance): triangulation of conversations, observations, and products; Earl and Katz (2006) principles of reliability, reference points, validity, and record keeping, with separate reference points and record keeping described for assessment for, as, and of learning; NESA principles of assessment.
• New South Wales Education Standards Authority, "Assessment for, as and of learning" support material: the three approaches defined by purpose, described as not necessarily discrete and usable individually or together; assessment for learning as teachers using evidence about knowledge, understanding, and skills to inform teaching; assessment as learning as students acting as their own assessors; assessment of learning as teachers using evidence to assess achievement against outcomes and standards. Note: the definitions are as published in the support material; the live NESA assessment page has since been restructured into the "Assessment and reporting" landing page.
• Earl, Lorna, and Katz, Steven (2006), "Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind," as cited in New South Wales Department of Education guidance above: the framework of assessment of, for, and as learning and its quality principles.
• SERP record: literal phrase search for the banked phrase on 4 November 2026 returned competing explainers including Essential Assessment ("Assessment for, as and of Learning"), Cambridge Assessment Network and Research, the New South Wales Education Standards Authority support material, and university and school guidance pages. Competing pages generally define the three purposes by purpose and actor, with comparison tables and classroom examples. This article differentiates itself by giving the formative and summative terminology warning in full, by working one task through all three purposes, by explaining validity, reliability, and reference points for the reporting purpose, and by addressing students, families, and teachers separately rather than writing for teachers alone.