Beware of celebrities. How does the assessment sector re-gain its authority and drive change?

A harmless celebrity endorsement? The backlash to England’s Department of Education campaign with UK TV reality star Gemma Collins is just another day of hand-wringers whinging and marketers nodding sagely.

While selling rights to your wedding photos seems quaint in the social media age, celebs now wade into debates and publicity about Serious Issues.

In the chase for clicks and ratings, celebs are platformed and shape public opinion. Mostly, the celebs are sciolists. People pretending to be knowledgeable and well-informed, but with superficial understanding. Fake it ‘til you make it.

Some deal in Epistemic Trespassing. This is when someone holds inherent expertise in an unrelated field, and then claims and acts as though they have it in another. Comedy actors claiming to be education and assessment experts, for example.  

Overall, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect. Self-interested celebs over-estimating their knowledge and competence. They lack deep-sector expertise, don’t recognize their incompetence, and their confidence becomes over-inflated.

It used to be Rent-a-Quote people. Self-appointed guardians of the public good. But the media landscape now reveals surprisingly well-funded, multi-channel pressure groups and campaigns, often backed by the retention of specialist legal counsel and PR companies.

Who or what are these celebrities protecting? It’s not learners locked out by paper exams Examine how these recent campaigns get their cash. Whose interests do they protect? It’s certainly not learners locked out by paper assessment. Ed-tech commentator Richard Taylor calls this, ‘The luxury belief problem...people wealthy and well-connected enough to absorb the consequences of their own stated positions.’

Celebrities have moved from cash for clicks (or chocolate) towards funding pressure groups

The backdrop is a nascent anti-edtech movement. Activists that have a financial interest in holding back evolving societal norms, maintaining the status quo, denying a voice to those who deserve equity and accessibility. This means the assessment sector’s authority is being constrained.

Activists with financial interest are constraining the assessment sector’s authority

These issues have recently converged and snowballed recently with exam malpractice/ cheating articles in the HOELT English exam procurement process. One article wheeled out a Member of the UK House of Lords (formerly a Culture Secretary). He mis-guidedly conflated a Covid-era Zoom speech with a high stakes exams. The Lord was made to appear poorly briefed, self-congratulatory, and indifferent to the on-the-ground causes and impact of exam malpractice. Ofsted’s former head also entered the debate.

Poorly-briefed (former) politicians, leaning on personal anecdote, damage the debate with their lack of curiosity about locked out learners.

Those in power (and those who yearn greatly to return) too easily forget that exam malpractice is a stubborn problem, regardless of delivery mode. It’s neglectful to say ‘keep things as they are’ when evidence and investigations show us otherwise. Lazy comment, by sciolists and those once in the public eye, obfuscates the debate. They latch onto matters where their superficiality betrays them. They refuse to be modest with their perceived wisdom, lack the curiosity to consider those learners who are locked out. and fall back on their singular experience, often lathed with a populist theme.

Not challenging superficial statements means we lock-out learners we’re supposed to be serving. Lazy paper assessment nostalgia is inequitable, harmful, and wrong.

I understand why many respected assessment sector experts want no part in the debate. Afraid of being made to feel small or stupid by those supposedly more learned. Bemused by dilettantes who sniff at learner equity and accessibility. Keep out of the headlines. Don’t disturb clients. Take the easy life.

The assessment sector needs communicators and figureheads that other domains cherish. For example, advocates in technical domains such as Tim Berners-Lee, Alice Roberts, and Maggie Aderin-Pocock are recognisible to the mainstream media.

Hats off to the GC with her Main Character Energy and 2.3M Insta followers for getting people to talk about qualifications. Because the Department of Education (83k on Insta) has nowhere near her reach. The GC gives you headlines. A junior minister is press release fodder.

What can the assessment sector do to re-gain authority and drive change?

Support your trade bodies. Speak up at conferences. Build client advocacy. Input to consultations, even when there’s no revenue available. Tailor decades of case study evidence, and reach different stakeholders. State the benefits again and again. Be coherent on fast-moving solutions, such as agentic AI. Get campaigning. Use endorsement with social media reach. Assessment leaders: set the agenda and be the voice of your sector.

When you next read about a celeb wading into the exam and assessment sector, think about their motivation, and who’s bankrolling their campaign. The innocent days of resting actors just keeping their name in the daily papers to get that next TV series are long gone. Be vigilant and speak up.