Woolsery Primary School – Assessment After Levels Information
Woolsery Primary School has developed the following strategy for
assessing children’s attainment progress as they move through the school,
and ensuring each child is measured against their End Of Year
Expectations.
The school’s prime tool for storing and analysing formative and summative
data remains School Pupil Tracker Online (SPTO). This is accessible to Staff,
Governors and Parents through different online portals, giving each
stakeholder a different level of access.
However, the data being put into SPTO has changed to take into
consideration assessment beyond the old National Curriculum levels.
Broadly, this can be grouped as Formative Assessment (ongoing
assessment of children’s learning as they generate work at school) and
Summative Assessment (end of year test data).
Formative Assessment
The school’s formative assessment is focused on the acquisition of skills by
children as they work through teaching sequences in lesson time.
Teachers will have identified particular key objectives in their planning
and will assess each child against those objectives at the end of the
teaching sequence. In the example shown below, the teacher has
highlighted which age-appropriate objectives are for all groups:(Must –
group 1), which are for the majority of the class:(Should – group 2) and
which are stretching targets for the most able:(Could – group 3).
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The Planning Tool then creates a grid called the Observation Form with
children’s names across the top and the selected objectives down the
side.
During marking and feedback, teachers will mark in the boxes the codes
(W), (M), (A) or (+) to indicate each child’s success with the learning
objectives for the sequence (see below). This will in time be transferred to
the grid shown below, but the paper will remain with the teachers’
planning for that teaching sequence. This is a vital aspect of our
assessment procedure: we must be able to tell which piece(s) of work a
teacher is using to inform their judgement on whether a child has
achieved a given objective or not. This enables secure and precise
moderation of judgements, both within school and, for example, between
our partner schools in the ACCT.
In the example shown below, the teacher has selected knowledge of
place value:
By highlighting on the coloured buttons at the bottom of each child’s
assessment box, teachers are able to record if this is an ongoing Target (T)
for the child, or if they are Working Towards (W), Mostly Achieved (M),
Achieved (A) or Exceeding (+) this objective. Teachers will only record an
objective as Achieved (A) is the child has both Attained and Retained the
learning point; in other words, if the teacher is sure that this skill has been
securely learnt by the child and is ready to move on to the next objective.
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SPTO now records when that judgement was made for each child and
enters it into their Learning Journey.
Half Termly Pupil Progress Meetings will centre around a discussion on
each child’s objective acquisition – in other words, whether they have
grasped the objectives planned for them and highlighting possible
strategies where they have not yet secured an (A) or (+) judgement.
Each child’s progress is benchmarked against the average for the cohort.
This is because we do not think that objective are acquired in a linear
fashion so, for example, it would be inaccurate to assume children will
achieve a third of their year groups objectives within a single term. By
comparing each child’s achievement with the average for the class (who
will of course have been exposed to the same number and type of
objectives), teachers can quickly see who is making expected progress or
better, and who is falling behind.
Children who are not making expected progress are recorded on an Off
Track Child (OTC) sheet at half termly pupil progress meetings where
interventions and refinements to their provision is discussed in order to
bring their learning back to at least an average level.
Formative judgements will be moderated within school teams and also
with professional colleagues within ACCT to ensure that teacher
judgements are accurate and sufficiently high in expectations.
Recording Summative Assessment Progress
Although the focus of assessment in our school is recording whether a
child has met a key objective or not (and if not, what is being done about
it), it is also important for the professionals working with the child –as well
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as his or her parents- to have an idea of the rate of progress they are
making on a longer term basis.
At the end of each year, all children are assessed against their National
Curriculum End of Year Objectives. This is recorded in SPTO as a High-, Midor Low- within their chronological year group. As all children are expected
to learn all of the objectives for their year, it is important that the
implication for this system is fully understood:
For a child at the end of Year 4:
Y4Low: The child has only achieved a small number of objectives for Year
4 and is well behind expected attainment.
Y4Mid: The child has achieved many of the objectives for Year 4 and is
moderately behind expected attainment.
Y4High: The child has achieved all of the objectives for Year 4 and is at an
expected level of achievement
There is explicit direction in the National Curriculum that children
achieving all objectives within their year should not then move on to
subsequent year group objectives (in the example above, to Year 5) but
should instead work towards a depth of learning. This means that more
able children will only achieve a “High” rating unless their performance is
truly exceptional, when the school will give consideration to teaching
them out of their chronological year group.
Depth of Learning (Sometimes called “Mastery”) will be developed for all
children through high quality, investigative learning opportunities. It is in
this area of the curriculum that the majority of our more able children will
receive further challenge in their learning. A good depth of learning is also
recorded in SPTO and will be visible on each child’s progress chart as time
goes on.
Children with Special Educational Needs may be taught from a
curriculum year group other than the one for their chronological age. In
this instance, it is important to remember that a “High” grade at the end
of the year, but in a lower year group, does not imply that the child is
working at an age-appropriate level. The school still has a long term
expectation that the child will, given the correct support, attain an age
appropriate level of attainment although this may not be until after the
Primary curriculum is completed.
In summary, the end of year expectations for each year group is as
follows:
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EY
0
EY
1
Reception
(EY 2)
Foundation Stage Curriculum
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6
Y1High Y2High Y3High Y4High Y5High Y6High
As part of teacher’s moderation of their end of year assessments, the
school will make use of published test packages, initially we will use those
from Rising Stars. We recognise that it will be some time before such
packages exactly mirror the requirements of the new curriculum and will
use the results of the tests to inform teacher judgements rather than override them.
Versions:
Original: October 2014
1st Revision: September 2015
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