Many education systems want a shared bank of formative assessment resources. In a decentralised system, the difficulty is not technical. It is to combine national coherence with regional ownership, so that teachers actually contribute to the bank and use it. This reflection works through five questions.
1. What governance model supports the bank over time?
A shared infrastructure for all, with pedagogical differentiation. A single national platform brings resources together on a common core, then adapts them in four layers:
| Layer | Role |
|---|---|
| National common core | Infrastructure, rules and shared principles: platform architecture, metadata model, quality assurance, contribution management, rights and use, search and access, additional services such as analytics and AI tools |
| Education level | Resources, tasks and feedback adapted to students’ age and level, for example primary and lower secondary |
| Subject area | Subject-specific expertise and metadata: processes, concepts and representations in mathematics; competency dimensions and text types in literacy |
| Regional context | Adaptation to regional curricula, languages and local contexts |
Governance follows the same logic: national coordination with distributed expertise. The national level defines the common core and ensures coherence. Teams for each education level guide task and feedback design. Subject experts define subject metadata and review resources. The regions contribute and adapt.
The expected benefits are coherence and quality at national level, pedagogical relevance for each level and subject, recognition of regional contexts, reuse of resources, and easier search.
2. Which roles sit at national and regional levels?
The national level sets the foundations and ensures coherence and quality:
- platform structure and infrastructure: architecture, interoperability, security, scalability;
- rules and expectations: governance, quality standards, the metadata framework, templates;
- quality assurance: review and curation processes, informed by regional feedback;
- monitoring and evaluation of use and impact;
- continuous improvement, including support for innovation such as new formats and AI;
- communication and support for communities of practice across regions.
The regional level contributes, adapts, implements and promotes:
- contributing classroom materials, tasks and contextualised examples;
- providing field insights on what works, emerging needs and gaps;
- taking part in review and curation, for instance through regional panels;
- promoting adoption among teachers and organising local professional learning;
- adapting resources to regional curricula and languages;
- building local communities and feeding regional priorities back to the national level.
Between the two, a continuous cycle: guidance and standards flow down; resources, feedback and insights flow up.
3. How can national coherence be balanced with regional ownership?
A strong national framework ensures coherence, quality and equity. Genuine regional ownership drives participation, relevance and sustainability. The balance rests on a few principles:
- partnership, not top-down expertise;
- mutual trust and recognition of expertise;
- early access to useful, high-quality content;
- equity across all languages and regions;
- light but effective quality review;
- transparent communication and monitoring.
In this partnership, the national level acts as a hub. It seeds the platform with an initial set of high-quality resources to show its value early, defines the shared framework, guarantees that every language is equally supported, builds contributors’ capacity, and listens to the regions. The regions contribute from the field, adapt, review as peers and promote use among colleagues.
Some enablers make the balance work: useful content available early, an inclusive multilingual approach, collegial validation focused on relevance rather than a heavy certification process, open and regular communication, shared indicators of success, and active communities of practice.
4. How can resources be sourced, developed and quality assured?
A structured and collaborative approach, in six stages, that builds on existing strengths:
- Define what we are looking for. A common brief: purpose and types of resources, quality criteria, templates, alignment with formative assessment principles.
- Target the curriculum. Position each resource within the subject, the education level, the curriculum objectives and the expected learning outcomes.
- Map and engage existing networks. Identify existing banks, teacher-led sharing practices and organisations already producing good resources; assess which ones meet the criteria and what blocks their circulation (language, curriculum alignment, rights, formats).
- Source and develop resources through complementary routes: commissioned development to fill identified gaps, practitioner sharing, integration with teacher professional learning, and integration with curriculum development.
- Quality assurance and validation, light but multi-layered: practitioner input, expert review by subject experts and teacher educators, evidence of classroom use, and platform analytics on use and ratings.
- Share, implement and improve. Make resources accessible in every language, support implementation, monitor use and feed the evidence back into the next cycle.
5. How can good resources be identified in regions and shared across them?
A collaborative and iterative process mobilises practitioners, recognises quality and makes adaptation easy:
- regional information and engagement, through conferences or workshops;
- an easy sharing tool, with simple upload and templates, preferably based on open-source or widely used collaborative tools;
- calls for contributions from teachers, schools and networks;
- practitioner workshops on submitted resources, to build a shared understanding of quality;
- ongoing support and follow-up through regular online meetings;
- involving active contributors in future initiatives, and recognising their work;
- adapting and scaling across regions: translation, adaptation to other curricula, guidance on how to remix resources, and common metadata and licences.
The guiding principles: partnership and trust, teacher-led collaboration, quality through collegial review, inclusion of all languages and regions, iterative development, and open-source, widely used tools.
Where AI fits
AI appears here as a service of the common core, not as its foundation. Its value depends on the same conditions as any assessment agent: rich metadata, clear rubrics and human validation. The talk Trusting AI in Digital Assessment sets out those conditions.