Assessing inquiry projects for high-stakes assessments: learning from other nations

By Rosemary Hipkins

The student panel at the recent Ed Rising meeting in Auckland inspired and uplifted the many experienced educators in the room, including me. Among other questions, the students were asked to describe a time when learning was exciting. Many of them responded by describing some version of an inquiry project. These projects have different names in the different schools, but the pattern was clear. Inquiry projects allow students to dig into contexts of personal interest, to collaborate with friends, to foreground subjects they most enjoy, and to “go deep” into learning that they find “interesting and difficult – just above my level”.

Earlier on that same day Bill Lucas from Winchester University in the UK had shared his thoughts on assessment reform. One of the slides he shared summarised examples of extended projects that students are undertaking as part of their assessment for qualifications. Looking at this side, I was struck by the thought that many teachers, and almost certainly most parents, would not be aware of these initiatives in other nations. I resolved in that moment to write a summary of several examples that are well documented, and set in educational contexts similar to our own.

Certificate of Education (SACE): South Australia

It is compulsory for senior secondary students in South Australia to complete a research project as part of their SACE qualification. A successfully completed project earns 10 credits, which is 5% of an overall SACE qualification. (It takes two years to gain the 200 credits needed in total.)

Here’s how the guidance handbook describes this component:

The Research Project provides a valuable opportunity for SACE students to develop and demonstrate skills essential for learning and living in a changing world. It enables students to develop vital skills of planning, research, synthesis, evaluation, and project management.

The Research Project enables students to explore an area of interest in depth, while developing skills to prepare them for further education, training, and work. Students develop their ability to question sources of information, make effective decisions, evaluate their own progress, be innovative, and solve problems. (link to handbook is at Overview - Research Project - South Australian Certificate of Education)

Projects are mostly internally assessed, with robust moderation procedures and strong professional learning support for teachers. A formal review was commissioned by the SACE board in 2018. It recommended moving the research project to year 11 (the first year of SACE) because its requirements had been restricting subject choice at year 12 (the final year of school in Australia.) Participation in learning languages had dropped as a result. The main focus of the review, however, was on the need to broaden requirements for entry into university studies, so that evidence of students’ general capabilities could be taken into account.

This advice has been acted on. Initially I was somewhat dismayed to find that the research component of SACE is being phased out in 2025, to be replaced in 2026 by a new module called “Activating Identities and Futures” (AIF). However, digging a little into the overview of this still-compulsory component of SACE, it became clear that the revised structure is intended to be more explicit about which capabilities might be assessed, and how. One interesting feature is that Year 10 students complete a foundational module called “Exploring Identities and Futures” before they enter their SACE years. They will complete the AIF module in Year 11, rather than year 12. Another interesting feature is that the modules were developed and piloted in a wide range of South Australian schools, building strong support ahead of their compulsory implementation in 2026. Here’s s snippet of feedback from one of the pilot schools:

Feedback from schools that piloted AIF in South Australia has been overwhelmingly positive. Students reported feeling energised and more engaged when they could focus on topics of their own choosing. They enjoyed forming stronger relationships with their teachers, took greater control of their own learning, and were able to transfer their new learning habits to other subjects. Additionally, schools and teachers involved in designing the subject saw both immediate and long-term benefits for students; their dispositions towards learning and greater student agency. Activating Identities and Futures | Brighton Secondary School

There are clear similarities between the student feedback summarised here and the comments made by the student panel at Ed Rising.

Extended Project Qualification (EPQ): UK

The EPQ is a Level 3 (final year) qualification available to students in the UK. It is designed to stand-alone, while becoming part of an overall qualification that includes results from assessment of A level subjects. It is worth around half the credits (called tariff points for university entrance purposes) that can be gained from a traditional A level subject. Depending how many A level subjects a student takes, an EPQ will typically make up 12.5-16% of their qualification.

Students plan their extended project, research and analyse sources of information and draw conclusions. They then either write a 5000-word written report, or they write a shorter report (around 1000 words) accompanied by an artefact such as a short film, an artwork, or an event. They document all these stages in a logbook that includes their decision-making processes and reflections on their learning. They also present their project to a non-specialist audience and answer questions about it.

Like the SACE, an extended project is internally marked in the school but externally moderated. One teacher is responsible for supervising a student’s project, marking the final submission, and assuring that it is the student’s own work. They may or may not have subject specialist knowledge relevant to the project. Many schools have an EPQ coordinator, who works with the teachers who do this work, to ensure internal consistency. The UK has several competing qualifications systems and schools sign up for the provider of their choice. The provider is then responsible for moderation of the extended projects.

This qualification has been well researched. For example, one recent research project (2023) inquired into further learning outcomes for students whose qualifications included an EPQ, compared to those who did not. The researchers, from Cambridge Assessment, found that students with an EPQ were more likely to go on to further study, and to do better academically once they got there. They did caution that these patterns don’t imply causation. It is possible that more academically able students choose to do an EPQ in the first place. But wouldn’t we want our most able students to be stimulated and inspired?

Extended Essay (EE): International Baccalaureate

All students must pass the Extended Essay (EE) component to gain an International Baccalaureate Diploma. The EE forms a part of the diploma core, together with an assessment of the Theory of Knowledge component of an IB course and a community service module. This core makes up just 7% of the total qualification, but without it, no qualification will be awarded.

There are many similarities between the EE and the EPQ but also some interesting differences. One teacher supervises a student’s EE project, and they may or may not be a subject expert in the chosen area. The research process culminates with writing an essay of up to 4000 words. The essay is marked externally but school-based moderation processes assure authenticity. Another difference is that students can choose to locate their topic in one of the IB curriculum’s six subject clusters, or they can opt to complete an extended essay in an area called “World Studies” which requires interdisciplinary research.

The International Baccalaureate Organisation commissions research to inquire into the efficacy and impact of its curriculum and assessment frameworks. Independently funded studies report similar findings to those commissioned by the IBO itself. As for the EPQ, there is evidence that students who gain an IB diploma are well prepared for university study. An important caveat to the many findings linked to their web page, is that the claims mostly relate to the whole diploma and not specifically to the EE component. One interesting exception is a survey of past IB students with a specific focus on how the EE benefitted them in their life after school. With the benefit of hindsight, 72% agreed or strongly agreed that the extended essay was an “academically significant part” of their diploma experience. They reported: interest and enjoyment; transferability of skills learned; ability to formulate coherent arguments, disciplined essay writing; understanding how to structure extended texts; and a passion for inquiry.

Making space for assessing interdisciplinary thinking

One of the potential advantages of a modular assessment system like NCEA is that, in theory at least, achievement standards from different curriculum subjects could be combined to create a pathway for assessing an interdisciplinary inquiry such as those sketched above. But doing so goes against the grain of traditional subject-line timetabling practices. The SACE module and the EPQ address this challenge by becoming assessments in their own right. Researching how these modules are timetabled in schools could be an interesting challenge. It’s worth noting that several recent research projects have arrived at in-theory models of how a balance between subject-specific and interdisciplinary learning might best be achieved.

In the UK, Marwick and Reiss (2024) present the case for making interdisciplinary learning a formal part of the school curriculum, balancing this with recent calls for a “powerful knowledge” approach to curriculum design. They argue that interdisciplinary learning is essential to prepare students for the challenges they are bound to face in life beyond school. They also argue that the combination of discipline-specific knowledge with inquiry into a complex context, is what makes knowledge powerful. A recent PH D study researched potential structures for a “wellbeing” curriculum for senior secondary schooling in New Zealand (Morey, 2025). Balancing the many pragmatic considerations that impact on timetabling, including current NCEA requirements, this study concluded that a 40/60 split between interdisciplinary and discipline-specific learning would be an achievable timetabling balance.

New curriculum thinking is hard and so is changing timetabling and assessment practices. All of them are implicated in the inquiry initiatives from other nations that I have sketched here. I suspect we could learn a lot from teachers who are working in our own secondary schools where innovations along these lines are already established. The responses of students at the Ed Rising meeting suggest there could be strong benefits in lifting both engagement and achievement if we were to systematically pursue this type of change.

References

Hipkins, R., Johnson, M. & Sheehan, M. (2016) NCEA in Context. NZCER Press. NCEA in Context | New Zealand Council for Educational Research

Marwick, A. & Reiss, M. (2024). Reconceptualising the school curriculum to address global challenges. Marrying aims-based and ‘powerful knowledge’ approaches. The Curriculum Journal, 36, 1-14. Reconceptualising the school curriculum to address global challenges: Marrying aims‐based and ‘powerful knowledge’ approaches - Markwick - 2025 - The Curriculum Journal - Wiley Online Library

Morey, C. (2025). Toward a Sustainable Wellbeing Metacurriculum for New Zealand Senior Secondary Schools. PhD thesis, awarded by The University of Waikato. Toward a sustainable wellbeing metacurriculum for secondary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand