assessment at Trimley st martin
ASSESSMENT LEADER - MRS MATTHEWS
If you have any questions about Assessment speak with Mrs Matthews.
| TSM - Assessment Policy 2016 |
ASSESSMENT FROM SEPTEMBER 2015 onwards
1. The principles and aims of assessmentTSM purposes and principles of assessment All schools now have the freedom to choose their own approaches to formative and summative assessment, according to what best suits their pupils, curriculum and staff. This provides an opportunity for us to challenge and improve their assessment systems and to build greater expertise in assessment.
The TSM Assessment process has 3 clear aims:a) Clarity for pupils, parents and carersWithout levels, we can use our own assessment systems to support more informative and productive conversations with pupils and parents. Our clearer assessment process enables pupils to take more responsibility for their achievements by encouraging them to reflect on their own progress, understand what their strengths are and identify what they need to do to improve very easily. Making sure that our assessment is linked to the content of the school’s curriculum will allow for communications with parents to provide a clearer sense of how to support their children to build and consolidate learning. We will be able to pin point the areas that pupils are struggling with.
b) Support for pupilsBy no longer grouping pupils according to levels, we can give more focus to providing pupils with feedback which highlights the aspects of the curriculum where their knowledge and understanding is secure and those areas where there are gaps. Using a range of formative assessment methods allows our teachers to tailor their assessments to the underpinning knowledge and skills being taught.
Removing the ‘label’ of levels will help to improve pupils’ mind-sets about their own ability. In the past, differentiating teaching according to pupils’ levels meant some pupils did not have access to more challenging aspects of the curriculum.
c) Teacher workloadThe expectation to collect data in efforts to track pupils’ progress towards target levels considerably increased teachers’ workload. At Trimley St Martin we want teachers to build their confidence in using a range of formative assessment techniques without the burden of unnecessary recording and tracking.
The disconnect between levels and the content of the national curriculum also meant that telling a parent his or her child was level 4b, did not provide meaningful information about what that child knew and understood or needed to know to progress. Levels were used to measure both end of phase achievement and lesson-by-lesson formative progress, but they had not been designed to fulfil the latter purpose, with the result that formative assessment was often distorted.
Why this school no longer uses National Curriculum Levels
Despite being intended only for use in statutory national assessments, too frequently levels also came to be used for in-school assessment between key stages in order to monitor whether pupils were on track to achieve expected levels at the end of key stages. This method distorted the purpose of in-school assessment, particularly day-to-day formative assessment. Teachers became focused on whether children were moving from one sub level to the next rather than whether they were becoming competent in particular skills.
Too often levels became viewed as thresholds and teaching became focused on getting pupils across the next threshold instead of ensuring they were secure in the knowledge and understanding required for their age. Depth and breadth of understanding were sometimes sacrificed in favour of pace. Levels also used a ‘best fit’ model, which meant that a pupil could have serious gaps in their knowledge and understanding, but still be placed within the level. This meant it wasn’t always clear exactly which areas of the curriculum the child was secure in and where the gaps were. For example two pupils levelled at 3C could have very different gaps in their learning. Grading them 3C would not help to address those gaps!
Progress became synonymous with moving on to the next level, but progress can involve developing deeper or wider understanding, not just moving on to work of greater difficulty. Sometimes progress is simply about consolidation.
Although levels were intended to be used to assess pupils against the whole programme of study, the results of almost any assessment were translated into a level or sublevel and used as a measure of overall attainment. This either required aggregating a wide variety of data into a single number, which did not represent pupil performance accurately, or meant that levels were being assigned to individual pieces of work, regardless of how much of the programme of study they covered.
The level descriptors were also open to interpretation. Different teachers could make different judgements. Teachers receiving new pupils frequently disagreed with the levels those pupils had been given by previous teachers.
PurposeAt Trimley St Martin Primary School we believe that we are assessing the children for two key purposes:
The Assessment ProcessOur assessment will enable the school to measure how secure children are with regards to working at the level expected for their age. Our assessment process will also enable us to identify the children who are secure in the year group expectations and those who are exceeding.
Our assessment system aims to alert the teacher to the areas in which a child is secure but also highlight areas of the curriculum that need further support, re teaching or consolidation.
Each half term, teacher will record how many of the year group expectations a child is secure in. The school believes that if a child is secure in 95% - 100% of the expectations then they are in fact classed as achieving the expected standard for their age. This information will be added to a distribution sheet which will allow the school to see the following:
The TSM Assessment process has 3 clear aims:a) Clarity for pupils, parents and carersWithout levels, we can use our own assessment systems to support more informative and productive conversations with pupils and parents. Our clearer assessment process enables pupils to take more responsibility for their achievements by encouraging them to reflect on their own progress, understand what their strengths are and identify what they need to do to improve very easily. Making sure that our assessment is linked to the content of the school’s curriculum will allow for communications with parents to provide a clearer sense of how to support their children to build and consolidate learning. We will be able to pin point the areas that pupils are struggling with.
b) Support for pupilsBy no longer grouping pupils according to levels, we can give more focus to providing pupils with feedback which highlights the aspects of the curriculum where their knowledge and understanding is secure and those areas where there are gaps. Using a range of formative assessment methods allows our teachers to tailor their assessments to the underpinning knowledge and skills being taught.
Removing the ‘label’ of levels will help to improve pupils’ mind-sets about their own ability. In the past, differentiating teaching according to pupils’ levels meant some pupils did not have access to more challenging aspects of the curriculum.
c) Teacher workloadThe expectation to collect data in efforts to track pupils’ progress towards target levels considerably increased teachers’ workload. At Trimley St Martin we want teachers to build their confidence in using a range of formative assessment techniques without the burden of unnecessary recording and tracking.
The disconnect between levels and the content of the national curriculum also meant that telling a parent his or her child was level 4b, did not provide meaningful information about what that child knew and understood or needed to know to progress. Levels were used to measure both end of phase achievement and lesson-by-lesson formative progress, but they had not been designed to fulfil the latter purpose, with the result that formative assessment was often distorted.
Why this school no longer uses National Curriculum Levels
Despite being intended only for use in statutory national assessments, too frequently levels also came to be used for in-school assessment between key stages in order to monitor whether pupils were on track to achieve expected levels at the end of key stages. This method distorted the purpose of in-school assessment, particularly day-to-day formative assessment. Teachers became focused on whether children were moving from one sub level to the next rather than whether they were becoming competent in particular skills.
Too often levels became viewed as thresholds and teaching became focused on getting pupils across the next threshold instead of ensuring they were secure in the knowledge and understanding required for their age. Depth and breadth of understanding were sometimes sacrificed in favour of pace. Levels also used a ‘best fit’ model, which meant that a pupil could have serious gaps in their knowledge and understanding, but still be placed within the level. This meant it wasn’t always clear exactly which areas of the curriculum the child was secure in and where the gaps were. For example two pupils levelled at 3C could have very different gaps in their learning. Grading them 3C would not help to address those gaps!
Progress became synonymous with moving on to the next level, but progress can involve developing deeper or wider understanding, not just moving on to work of greater difficulty. Sometimes progress is simply about consolidation.
Although levels were intended to be used to assess pupils against the whole programme of study, the results of almost any assessment were translated into a level or sublevel and used as a measure of overall attainment. This either required aggregating a wide variety of data into a single number, which did not represent pupil performance accurately, or meant that levels were being assigned to individual pieces of work, regardless of how much of the programme of study they covered.
The level descriptors were also open to interpretation. Different teachers could make different judgements. Teachers receiving new pupils frequently disagreed with the levels those pupils had been given by previous teachers.
PurposeAt Trimley St Martin Primary School we believe that we are assessing the children for two key purposes:
- To identify strengths in subject areas and to identify gaps in learning which can then planned for and addressed.
- To ensure children are meeting and achieving the expected standard and that they are making good progress whilst being in the school.
The Assessment ProcessOur assessment will enable the school to measure how secure children are with regards to working at the level expected for their age. Our assessment process will also enable us to identify the children who are secure in the year group expectations and those who are exceeding.
Our assessment system aims to alert the teacher to the areas in which a child is secure but also highlight areas of the curriculum that need further support, re teaching or consolidation.
Each half term, teacher will record how many of the year group expectations a child is secure in. The school believes that if a child is secure in 95% - 100% of the expectations then they are in fact classed as achieving the expected standard for their age. This information will be added to a distribution sheet which will allow the school to see the following:
- The children are likely to exceed the year group expectation MASTERY (Deep / Advanced)
- The children who are on-track / likely to achieve the national expectation SECURE
- The children who are unlikely to achieve the national expectation. EMERGING (Commenced / Developed)
SCHOOLS APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT (From September 2015)
New Year Group gradings
The ASSESSMENT PROCESS
Reading, Writing and Maths will be assessed by teacher judgement and evidence of learning that the children are showing in their books, through questioning and discussion and in summative tests. This is an ongoing process.
At the beginning of a new academic year, as children are being judged against the End of Year statements, they will be only be beginning to develop their knowledge . By using professional knowledge and judgement teachers will know what the children can already do and what they think the children can achieve. At different stages across the school year, children will either be 'working towards the National expectation' for their year group, 'achieving the National expectation' or 'mastering' the national expectation.
The Government have said that at least 85% of children should be 'achieving the National Expectation' by the end of the academic year.
The school has broken the categories down into smaller sub categories as only having, below expectation, at expectation and above expectation is not enough. Each category has a % of expectations met. At the start of every academic year, all children will start in the commenced box unless they are significantly below the level expected in the previous year OR exceptionally above.
At the beginning of a new academic year, as children are being judged against the End of Year statements, they will be only be beginning to develop their knowledge . By using professional knowledge and judgement teachers will know what the children can already do and what they think the children can achieve. At different stages across the school year, children will either be 'working towards the National expectation' for their year group, 'achieving the National expectation' or 'mastering' the national expectation.
The Government have said that at least 85% of children should be 'achieving the National Expectation' by the end of the academic year.
The school has broken the categories down into smaller sub categories as only having, below expectation, at expectation and above expectation is not enough. Each category has a % of expectations met. At the start of every academic year, all children will start in the commenced box unless they are significantly below the level expected in the previous year OR exceptionally above.
The other big change is that high achievers will work on the mastery element of the curriculum; once achieving the National Expectation for their year group. They will not move on to objectives from the year group above. Within each year group there will be two mastery gradings; advanced and deep.
exceptional talent
Those children who are exceptionally talented e.g those who could probably sit a GCSE in Year 6 will be graded in a different way.
These children will be included in the Exceptional Standard category and these will be only children who will be given work / objectives from higher year groups and being given grading that show which year group standard they are working at.
These children will be included in the Exceptional Standard category and these will be only children who will be given work / objectives from higher year groups and being given grading that show which year group standard they are working at.
BELOW THE NATIONAL STANDARD
Those children who are significantly below the national expectation will be included in this category. For some children they will still be levelled using P-levels. Other children who are significantly behind can be graded against year group expectations below their own. This will normally be EHCP or Statemented children or children with profound learning needs. All other children should be working towards their own year group objective. It is these groups of children who were previously let down by the National Curriculum levels as there was never any expectation to enable them to catch up.
REPORTING TO PARENTS ABOUT ATTAINMENT AND PROGRESS
The biggest difference is how we will talk to parents about how their child is progressing during the year. With the old National Curriculum levels, each year children were given a target for the end of the year, and during the year we would tell you what National Curriculum level your child was at. For Example: A child could finish Year 3 with a level 3a, and in Year 4 would have a target of a 4b for the end of the year.
At Parent’s Evenings throughout the year you may be told that they have moved to a 4c and then on to a 4b. We could use the levels system this way because there was no correlation between a level and a child’s year group, and this can be seen in the way that in a Year 6 class there could be a range of levels, from level 2 to a level 6.
However, the new National Curriculum sets out expectations for each year group and children will be assessed against those every year, so a child in Year 4 will always be judged against the expectations for the end of Year 4.
During the year, when we have conversations with the parent about a child’s progress we will show the parents that the progress can be seen in your child's work, we will talk them through where the strengths and gaps are in their child’s learning and how this compares to the expectation for the year group your child is in. As the system becomes more embedded, the child will be able to talk about their learning from the check lists and learning ladders that will be used in the classroom.
The school will use a pupil progress sheet to share assessment information with parents. Each full term this information will be updated to indicate how a particular child is progressing with the year group expectations.
At Parent’s Evenings throughout the year you may be told that they have moved to a 4c and then on to a 4b. We could use the levels system this way because there was no correlation between a level and a child’s year group, and this can be seen in the way that in a Year 6 class there could be a range of levels, from level 2 to a level 6.
However, the new National Curriculum sets out expectations for each year group and children will be assessed against those every year, so a child in Year 4 will always be judged against the expectations for the end of Year 4.
During the year, when we have conversations with the parent about a child’s progress we will show the parents that the progress can be seen in your child's work, we will talk them through where the strengths and gaps are in their child’s learning and how this compares to the expectation for the year group your child is in. As the system becomes more embedded, the child will be able to talk about their learning from the check lists and learning ladders that will be used in the classroom.
The school will use a pupil progress sheet to share assessment information with parents. Each full term this information will be updated to indicate how a particular child is progressing with the year group expectations.
TEACHER RECORDING & MONITORING
Every half term the teachers will collate their notes, their annotated plan, photographs, work produced by the children, post it note questions given to the given and sit down to decide which children are secure in particular expectations. They will use this information to arrive at a grading.
Teachers will then transfer the names of the children on to the distribution sheet similar to that used with National Curriculum levels.
The colour coding the box shows the expected progress through the different steps. Children in the grey section will be considered to be on track to meet the expectations. Those in the green section would be making above the expected progress and those in the pink would need to be focused on very carefully.
Teachers will then transfer the names of the children on to the distribution sheet similar to that used with National Curriculum levels.
The colour coding the box shows the expected progress through the different steps. Children in the grey section will be considered to be on track to meet the expectations. Those in the green section would be making above the expected progress and those in the pink would need to be focused on very carefully.
PUPIL PROGRESS MEETINGS & INTERVENTION GROUPS
The distribution sheet will be used to identify children who need intervention and those who are risk of not meeting the year group expectations.
Those in the pink boxes will be identified first. The class teacher and the Assessment leader will then use the spreadsheet to identify the focus of the interventions (Wave 1 Classroom, Wave 2 Booster, Wave 3 1:1 or specialist support). In the example above the focus of the intervention group might be number bonds and subtraction facts within 20. This may be re visited in class as clearly the children didn’t understand it as well as it becoming the focus of booster groups too.
Those in the pink boxes will be identified first. The class teacher and the Assessment leader will then use the spreadsheet to identify the focus of the interventions (Wave 1 Classroom, Wave 2 Booster, Wave 3 1:1 or specialist support). In the example above the focus of the intervention group might be number bonds and subtraction facts within 20. This may be re visited in class as clearly the children didn’t understand it as well as it becoming the focus of booster groups too.
YEARLY ASSESSMENT CYCLE
