Meaningful change in educational assessment starts with two things: big ideas about what is needed and the small steps that teachers and leaders can take to bring about this meaningful change. In this webinar, Professor Bill Lucas will be in conversation with Dr Laura Kerslake. They will discuss possibilities for new or alternative forms of assessment that help all learners to thrive. Starting with the big ideas about the next generation of assessment, they will then offer practical suggestions that teachers and leaders can implement in their settings. These will be based on Bill and Laura’s extensive experience in areas such as creative thinking, inquiry learning and oracy, as well as other forms of assessment.
This webinar is suitable for leaders and teachers of learners of all ages. Following the webinar, attendees will receive the publication from the Next Generation Conference (February 2026) which has further links to resources and case studies of assessment practice.
Speakers:
Professor Bill Lucas is Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester, UK. He is a writer, speaker and education reformer. Bill’s research focuses on understanding those dispositions for learning which help people succeed and flourish in life, how they can be cultivated and how evidenced. Bill’s model of creativity, developed with colleagues at the University of Winchester, is now in use in more than thirty countries. Bill is chair of the advisory board of the Global Institute of Creative Thinking and is a Commissioner for the UK’s Digital Badging Commission. He was co-chair of the strategic advisory group for the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Test and an academic adviser to the Durham Commission on Creativity in Education and to the OECD’s recent research into creativity and critical thinking. In 2020, Bill co-founded Rethinking Assessment and in the same year was honoured with a special edition focusing on his work in reforming assessment by the British Psychological Society. Bill is a prolific writer with more than 100 publications to his name. Recent publications include Creative thinking in schools across the world: a snapshot of progress in 2022 and A field guide to assessing creative thinking in schools. His acclaimed critique of the education system, Educating Ruby: what our children really need to learn, written with Guy Claxton, asks challenging questions about the future of education. Bill’s latest publication is Creative Thinking in Schools: a Leadership playbook. It has been translated into Welsh, Thai and Urdu.
