Since the decline of the National Curriculum Level Descriptions, schools in England have been asked to design their own forms of assessment at Key Stage 3. This had led to a great deal of creativity, but also a number of challenges. In this article Matt Stanford reflects on his department’s attempts to develop a rigorous end-of-year assessment. In doing so, his department had to reflect on their very rationale for assessing pupils. In particular, he elaborates on how his use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) allowed him to ease the time pressure under which teachers work.