Assessment
Assessment of the curriculum is a key aspect of how we ensure all children make the best possible progress. We aim for all children to know more, do more and remember more.
Lesson Observation: Teachers link back to pupils’ prior learning and reinforce key ideas, they use open-ended questioning to check understanding and adjust planning to pitch work appropriately etc.
Pupil discussions: There are regular opportunities for senior leaders, subject leaders and class teachers to evaluate the impact of the curriculum in terms of pupils building on prior learning, retaining key ideas, skills and concepts, making use of feedback and recognising next steps. Pupils also identify improving learning behaviours.
Work Scrutiny: Senior leaders and subject leaders have regular opportunities to check for consistency of provision across the curriculum, implementation of policies on marking and feedback, pitch of work and opportunities for independent work.
Subject Reviews: Our school often organises subject reviews within the school and including external parties in order to look at delivery of a subject across the school. These reviews prioritise identifying whether sequencing is effective, to check for ‘gaps’ and for teachers’ subject knowledge (and CPD implications), as well as identifying and sharing particularly good practice.
Progress Meetings: There are regular discussions between senior leaders and class teachers to review pupil progress and curriculum implementation, identify pupils in danger of falling behind, identify professional development priorities. From these, clear actions are identified and implemented to ensure all children make the best possible progress.
Recording and analysing attainment and progress: Detailed records are maintained of pupils’ performance in key areas such as phonics , early reading and mathematics and termly judgements of attainment in core subjects relative to national expectations. Analysis provides an overview of performance including year groups/classes requiring more support and variation in progress of different groups of pupils.
Internal and external moderation: There are regular opportunities for teachers to share judgements of current performance and next steps both across year groups within school and with colleagues in other local schools. This draws on the expertise of colleagues in school who have operated as external moderators for both the local learning partnership and the Local Authority.
Identification of and support for pupils requiring additional support: Ongoing systems identify children needing to make accelerated progress, particularly those most affected by the periods of lockdown. Monitoring strategies are also used to evaluate the effectiveness of provision.
Transition arrangements: Internal transition meetings are held to pass on key information to the next teacher and to minimise any disruption to progress. There are well-established systems developed with the feeder secondary schools to provide key assessment information. More detailed records are made available for all SEND pupils and other vulnerable pupils.
Reporting to parents: We hold parents’ evenings in the autumn and spring terms and annual reports in summer. Efforts are made to cover not only academic performance but also progress made in learning behaviours.
Reporting to governors: Termly judgement summaries, as well as key findings from analysis, are made available to governors as well as significant issues identified by other assessment activities. These inform school improvement priorities.
The role of the teacher
- Teachers plan lessons to meet the needs of the pupils in their class.
- They review their planning regularly and make necessary adjustments to ensure all children make the best possible progress.
- Teachers provide feedback to pupils in order for them to improve. Our feedback policy prioritises whole class feedback for maximum impact on the greatest number of children, alongside small group and individual feedback as necessary.
- Teachers regularly attend internal moderation with colleagues from across the school as well as external moderation with colleagues from other schools.
- Teachers identify pupils who are not on track with their learning and those that have fallen behind. They plan opportunities for these children to catch up.
- Teachers provide key transition information for new teachers (within school and as pupils move on to secondary school) so that children can continue to make good progress as they move on.
- Across units of work, teachers reflect on the concepts that they are teaching to ensure that they build on prior learning and regularly review what has already been taught.
- Teachers identify curriculum links, in particular related to the school’s key drivers.
- Teachers develop the whole child and implement strategies related to the zones of regulation and trauma informed schools.
- Teachers use open ended questions to encourage children to deepen their thinking.
- Teachers conduct day to day assessments during sessions and post lessons to identify areas of strength and next steps. A key strategy in our maths curriculum is Same Day Intervention which teachers plan based upon gaps in learning so that children keep up with their class’ content.
- End of block White Rose Maths tests and summative tests, as well as termly Reading assessments are used to track children’s attainment and progress.
- Teachers record children’s attainment using Point In Time Assessments (PITA) each term.
- Teachers implement retrieval practice strategies to ensure children regularly revisit key concepts and knowledge is committed to long term memory.
- Teachers report to parents formally during parents’ evening and school reports, and informally through ClassDojo, telephone calls and in conversation.
The role of the subject leader
- Subject leaders regularly drop in to lessons to see learning in action.
- Subject leaders review lesson planning to ensure it is meeting the curriculum requirements and also matching the needs of the learners.
- Subject leaders collect samples of work to review the standards in their subject.
- Subject leaders discuss with pupils to gain the children’s insight into their subject.
- Subject leaders work alongside class teachers, the SLT and external reviewers to evaluate standards in their subject.
- Subject leaders analyse data for their subject to ensure their subject provides the best possible progress for all children.
- Subject leaders report to governors about standards within their subject.
The role of the Senior Leadership Team
- The SLT conduct regular lesson drop-ins to monitor and evaluate standards.
- The SLT implement CPD for teachers and subject leaders.
- The SLT review planning to ensure curriculum and coverage and to ensure lessons are adjusted to meet the needs of all learners.
- The SLT conduct work scrutiny to ensure high standards are achieved.
- The SLT discuss the curriculum with pupils to ensure the curriculum has impact.
- The SLT organises moderation exercises.
- The SLT collate data and analyse to track the progress of individuals and groups.
- The SLT ensure that pupils who are below ARE or who are falling behind are provided with learning opportunities in order to catch up.
- The SLT report to governors about the standards within school.
- The SLT create and implement the School Improvement Plan linked to the key trends identified from assessments
What changed in 2014?
Like all English primary schools we had to adjust our assessment procedures to meet new statutory requirements, as laid down in the New National Curriculum, which became effective from 2014. All primary schools had to change their assessment tracking from the old National Curriculum levels ( eg 2b, 4a etc) , to New Curriculum assessment without levels (AWL), where the child is assessed against national expectations for their age group, as defined in the new National Curriculum.
This curriculum has been in place for Years 1, 3, 4 and 5 since September 2014. (Year 2 and 6 who were half way through SATS preparation remained on the old until July 2015). But now it applies to all children Full details of the content can be found on our curriculum pages : .http://www.billingborough.lincs.sch.uk/curriculum-overview-y1-6/
In 2015, to avoid confusion ( and nationally there was concern amongst schools about how exactly the new system worked) like nearly all schools we spoke to, we assessed all our children using the old levels for the academic year 2014-15. School wrote to parents explaining this when we sent out children's reports in July of that year.(See letter below).
Since then, from 2015-16 all children were assessed against the new expectations. Teachers review where the children are at the beginning of the year, during it and where they finish it, this gave us a picture of children's progress.
At the same time teachers make an assessment of pupils effort. How much determination, focus and resillience they show. We share this with parents at parent's evenings, alongside the pupils annual report and any statutory results.
We hope this section of our web site helps answer parent's enquiries and questions about how we assess your child's learning and our assessment system.
We apologise if it seems somewhat complex but the Department for Education (DfE) left schools "free" to decide how this process should work. For some time the picture for schools was not completely clear, but now - with a few years under our belt (and in our case two assessment tools later) we believe school has a evolved a strong, secure process by which we can track your child's progress from their own personal starting point.
What exactly is "Primary Assessment"?
The DfE expects a school's assessment cycle to show, at any given time, how a child may be working at one of several stages in relation to the age related expectations set for the end of each key stage. A judgement is made in this respect at the end of each key stage journey that is in Years 2 and 6. These are Working towards the expected standard - not met it yet, Working at the expected standard., Working at greater depth within the expected standard. The aim is a concept of deep learning, of "Mastery" of the curriculum. This concept is best understood as being: those at deep, "Mastery" level are able to take the knowledge and skills they have learnt from the "Known" (eg a method of sentence construction taught in their morning English lesson) and apply it to the "Unknown (for example an explanation of a scientific phenomenon in an experiment taught in the afternoon some days later). This shows how learning is embedded and applied in a range of contexts.
For some children with very specific needs they may be at a pre-key stage level and there are descriptors ( that came from the Rochford review of SEND) that are used here.
How do we show progress?
The new curriculum is more advanced than the old so, in its early years, many children were not working at the desired level. This was because, either the subject matter had not yet been taught or, was not on the previous curriculum and was new. Many children , at the start of this process, were often working at a level different to their age, this is less common now. However, we judge success based on the progress children make from where each of them starts, while aiming to move them towards the age related level as soon as is possible but without undue pace so skills are embedded. Children whose level is adrift of their peers receive additional intervention aimed at closing gaps effectively.
Children who meet the standard are supported to develop and broaden their skills, use and apply them, rather than keep driving them on wards via an upwards only trajectory.
To begin with, how exactly this was going to work, where grade boundries would be for "success" at the end of Y2 and Y6 was very much unknown and how this was going to be used to show progress from an earlier time in school eg KS1, was unconfirmed.
The DfE says schools are free to decide how they track and make these judgements...
To work completely alone as a school would make it difficult to moderate our judgements against a bigger picture. Therefore, in conjunction with our group of collaborative schools (Osbournby, Ancaster and Navenby), we initially decided to purchase an assessment programme together so we could robustly track children’s attainment from their individual starting points. The programme was called "Assertive Mentoring". In 2017 we moved on from this paper based/ excel system to one which was internet based and more intuitive, "ScholarPack".
Understanding our ScholarPack assessment practice…
Steps
Represent the national curriculum objectives for each year e.g. Step 1 covers Year 1 objectives, Step 6 is year 6, Step 0 is Reception. Most children work at, or within, the step which matches their age group but some, who may have barriers to learning or additional needs, might work at lower steps. Points
Within a Step, for each objective, a child may be at one of several stages of attainment ( see below), progress from one to the next increases their points : E=Emerging à D=Developing à S=Secureà W = working at greater depth à W+ = a child who has a much deeper, broader level of understanding than average for their age.
As children make this journey, teachers record this on the system, a maths example for Step 4 is shown below, each column relates to a different child and their proficiency at that moment in time.
Check points
Steps are broken down into check points, which is when teachers collect and analyse their assessment data and update their tracking ( the rationale behind these decisions is given below). There are 6 checkpoints in a year: check point 1 in October, 2 at Christmas, 3 in February, 4 at Easter up to 6 by the end of July. There are suggested numbers of points a child should have attained by each check point. So, for example, age related attainment for a child in Year 3 in reading, at Easter would be represented as 3:4 i.e. working at Year 3 objectives at a check point 4 standard.
Score
Each step + check point has a score, our example above 3:4 has an aggregate score of 34. A child’s score begins accruing from Nursery and concludes at the end of Year 6. The example below shows a snap shot of and example of year end assessment
This movement through the check points can be given a description to show how the child is progressing. To start a pupil is demonstrating emergent , beginning, skills. As they progress they are developing we can see their skills growing . With more progress we can say that a child is there, working at a secure level in that objective in that stage. When a pupil advances further we can say they are ready for the next step, working at a greater depth. Those at a stage above this have reached a deep level of learning, they should be very secure, they are able to show Mastery of a subject at a greater level than most other children in their peer group.
At each check point a teacher makes decisions based on all their evidence for each objective, each progressive decision made adds points to the total. The points correlate to a step and check point equivalent. Below you can see examples of this in a Year 3 English where the final summative decision is driven by the points scored. This is not a precise science as every child is different!
Assessing Attitudes to Learning
Academic success is rarely achieved without the right attitude to learning.
At the end of the year we provide criteria against which attitudes can be tracked and children supported to make improvements, should this be required. If there are concerns these are raised at parents evening during the year.
This covers behaviour in and out of the class room, uniform, attendance, effort, home work and punctuality.
The vast majority of our pupils have very positive attitudes to learning and this should be praised and acknowledged, which we do in our TRY and Shield assemblies and by awarding tickets on a daily basis.
The full government report on life after levels can be read here: