What is the Measure of Clever?

It began with a simple comment…

In conversation, my daughter described two peers in her class as “really clever.” When I asked why, she answered without hesitation:

“Because they always know the answers… and they’re always finished first.”

It was a small moment, but one that stayed with me.

Because what she described wasn’t just her own opinion it reflected something she has already learned to recognise. In her world, cleverness is associated with speed, accuracy, and getting things right first time.

Children pick this up quickly. They notice who is praised, who is called on, who is seen as successful. Over time, they begin to understand what matters, even when it is not explicitly stated.

But it raises an important question, what are we actually measuring when we describe a child as clever?

As Howard Gardner reminds us

“It’s not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart.”

Yet in many classrooms, only a narrow version of “smart” is consistently recognised.

My own experience as a primary teacher sits within this tension.

I worked within systems where children’s progress was tracked through levels, colours, and data sets structures intended to provide clarity and accountability. There was always an expectation to show progress, to evidence learning, to demonstrate movement.

But over time, the focus can shift.

Instead of asking, What does this child need next?
The question becomes, How does this child appear within the data?

And those are not the same question. Dylan William sums this up beautifully

“The purpose of assessment is not to label students, but to help them learn.”

The purpose of the assessment is to set meaningful next steps for that individual child, not for them to be pitted against their peers. Too often assessment becomes a way of categorising. Labels such as “on track,” “below,” or “exceeding” begin to shape how children are viewed and how they begin to view themselves.

I think about my colleagues still working in classrooms across Scotland.

They are supporting children with increasingly complex needs, balancing behaviour and wellbeing, and responding to a wide range of learning profiles. Alongside this, they are still expected to track, assess, and record often in ways that do not meaningfully influence what happens next in the classroom.

There is a growing sense of tension here. We’ve seen it in discussions around workload and more recently the threat of yet another series of strike actions.

Teachers are not opposed to accountability. They recognise the importance of understanding children’s progress. I think it’s important to highlight the difference between meaningful assessment and processes that simply generate more work without improving learning. This is the current state of our education system and many colleagues express their frustrations on how they are locked into a system at forces this upon them.

This tension becomes even clearer when considered alongside national guidance.

Education Scotland is explicit that tracking and monitoring should be meaningful, responsive, and rooted in professional judgement not reduced to a checklist. However, in many contexts, it can begin to feel exactly like that.

The introduction of online assessments at increasingly early stages, including Primary one, reflects a growing emphasis on measurement. Children who are just beginning their school journey are already being assessed, compared, and positioned.

We often describe this as raising attainment. It might be worth asking ourselves what does attainment look like? Why do we put so much importance on number bonds and spelling? How can schools possibly track attainment on being able to climb a tree or understand they lifecycle of a lady bird?

Attainment and it’s definition still reflects an older model of education. One that values standardisation and consistency. One that assumes there is a correct way to approach a task. One that rewards speed and accuracy.

As Ken Robinson observed:

“Schools are good at educating people out of their creative capacities.”

This really resinates with me personally, as a unidentified dyslexic thinker. I was always trying to work out a different pathways to the ‘correct answer’ I remember so well, the red pen marks in my jotter in Primary and the comments from teachers in Secondary reminding me to show my working out for further ‘marks’ to be given. This stunted my confidence to think differently or continue on with my own problem solving methods. In turn my resilience started to fade and the pressure to fit in, be first finished and memories as much as I could really set in!

This becomes even more relevant when we consider the world our children are entering. Many of the skills currently prioritised within formal education calculation, spelling accuracy, information recall are increasingly automated. Artificial intelligence can perform these tasks quickly and efficiently. This makes me really question what remains uniquely human and how are we supporting our young people into building these skills?

Throughout my experience I have identified that technology cannot build genuine relationships. It cannot care, nurture, or connect in meaningful ways. It cannot grow food, shape environments, or understand the physical world through lived experience.
It cannot navigate friendship, resolve conflict, or develop a sense of belonging.

These are deeply human skills and they matter throughout all age groups.

Yet they are often the least visible within our current systems of assessment.

This tension is also evident in how we understand difference.

When my daughter mentioned a peer who uses a computer because they are dyslexic, it highlighted how early perceptions begin to form. There was no judgement, but there was an assumption an emerging sense that difference might mean limitation.

I shared with her that I am dyslexic. Not as a deficit, but as a different way of thinking.

When reflecting on my own learning and understanding learning methods and styles I took great comfort in the following quote from Sally Shaywitz,

“Dyslexia is not a sign of low intelligence. It is often found in individuals with strong reasoning ability and creativity.”

This reflects the broader concept of neurodiversity, first articulated by Judy Singer, which recognises neurological differences as a natural and valuable part of human variation. However, systems built on standardisation often find this difficult to accommodate. When learning is narrowly defined, difference can easily be interpreted as falling short.

This is why the learning environment matters. If children learn in different ways, then the environments we create need to reflect that.

At Wild Bugs, we are working to offer an alternative.

Children are not treated as a group moving uniformly through a system, but as individuals. Staff hold professional qualifications equivalent to teachers, but operate without the same layers of bureaucracy that often shape classroom practice.

This allows for greater flexibility.

With smaller ratios, practitioners are able to observe closely, respond in the moment, and adapt learning to the child in front of them. The focus shifts from delivering content to engaging with the individual.

The outdoor environment supports this further. It reduces pressure, removes the emphasis on speed and comparison, and allows a wider range of strengths to emerge.

Children who may struggle within traditional classroom settings often demonstrate significant strengths in this context particularly in problem-solving, collaboration, and self-regulation.

In my exploration of all things outdoor learning and neurodiversity in children and young adults, my learning path returns me to two key authors Peter Gray and the esteemed Temple Grandin.

Peter discusses many aspects of growing up outdoors from play right through to social rules and outdoor regulations. He really takes us back to our human instict when it comes to play:

“Play is nature’s way of ensuring that young animals practice the skills they need to develop to survive.”

As Dr Temple Grandin reminds us what it is to be a good teacher/ Practitoner :

“Good teachers understand that for a child to learn, the teaching style must match the student’s learning style.”

My question still remains. What is the measure of clever? Surely it isn’t limited to speed, accuracy, and completion? Through these assessments we are only seeing a small part of what children can do.

We need to broaden our understanding of what intelligence is and how it is expressed. That means paying attention to how children think, how they approach challenges, how they relate to others, and how they adapt in unfamiliar situations. We know this. We have been told this repeatedly. And yet, the way we continue to assess children suggests otherwise. Current approaches to assessment remain rooted in narrow, measurable outputs (prioritising speed, recall, and correctness) while overlooking the far more complex, human aspects of learning. In this sense, much of what we measure is not only limited, but increasingly insufficient for the world children are growing into.

And it raises a deeper question: who has decided that this is what should be measured? Who determines that these are the indicators of success? Because it often feels as though these decisions are shaped at a distance, removed from the reality of classrooms, from the complexity of children, and from any meaningful understanding of childhood as a process of growth, not performance.

Perhaps the issue is not that some children are less clever, but that our measures of cleverness are too narrow to capture what actually matters.

And if that is the case, then the problem is not simply how we assess but what we have chosen to value.

References:

Gardner, Howard
Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Wiliam, Dylan
Wiliam, D. (2011) Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Robinson, Ken
Robinson, K. (2006) Do Schools Kill Creativity? TED Talk. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity (Accessed: 30 March 2026).

Shaywitz, Sally
Shaywitz, S. (2003) Overcoming Dyslexia. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Singer, Judy
Singer, J. (1999) ‘Why can’t you be normal for once in your life?’ From a ‘problem with no name’ to the emergence of a new category of difference. Honours Thesis, University of Technology Sydney.

Gray, Peter
Gray, P. (2013) Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. New York: Basic Books.

Grandin, Temple
Grandin, T. (2011) The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism and Asperger’s. Arlington, TX: Future Horizons.

Education Scotland
Education Scotland (n.d.) Curriculum for Excellence: Building the Curriculum 5 – A Framework for Assessment. Available at:

https://education.gov.scot

(Accessed: 30 March 2026).

Education Scotland (2017) How Good is Our School? (4th ed.). Livingston: Education Scotland.

Scottish Government (2013) Learning for Sustainability Report. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.