Leadership beyond strategy
Reform will not be sustained by good ideas alone. Sommer rightly identifies exam boards as crucial, but the day-to-day reality in schools is that leaders must interpret, mediate, and embody change. My research on whole-school approaches to sustainability found that the most effective leaders were not simply strategists. They were witnesses, able to hold uncertainty, act with humility, and create spaces for dialogue and plurality.
Assessment reform needs this kind of leadership. Without it, portfolios and rubrics risk being applied mechanically, stripped of their transformative potential. With it, they can become part of a deeper cultural journey in which assessment is not just a measure of past performance, but an invitation to become otherwise.
Toward assessment worth doing
Sommer is right to call time on the dominance of high-stakes exams. He is right to insist on simplicity, pragmatism, and urgency. But if “education worth having” requires “assessment worth doing,” then the task is not only technical but cultural.
We need assessment systems that reflect not just what students know, or even what they can do, but who they are becoming. We need to see assessment not only as an institutional lever but as a relational practice, co-authored with students, and grounded in the values that shape school life.
In Assessment 3.0, Sommer points us in the right direction. To get there, however, we must remember that change is not just about rubrics and portfolios. It is about culture, self, and agency. Without these, reform risks becoming another initiative. With them, it could become a genuine transformation, one that prepares young people not just for exams, but for the fragile, complex, and interconnected world they already inhabit.