Assessment statement

Introduction
At Our Lady's we believe that effective assessment provides information to improve teaching and learning for all pupils. Through a variety of assessment techniques we are able to give all pupils regular feedback on what they are doing well and how can continue to improve their learning.

Since the removal of National Curriculum Levels descriptors and the implementation of the New Curriculum, we have reviewed a variety of assessment systems.  After reviewing the available systems the school has produced a series of stepped targets for Speaking and Listening, Reading, Writing, Mathematics and the non-core subjects.

 

Why do we assess?

Assessment provides valuable information to help children, teachers, parents and school leaders to acknowledge, analyse and review achievements and progress in learning against expected standards. Our assessments inform our immediate and long term planning and also give different information.

· Children - the learners -  assessment provides an understanding of where they are secure, what it is that they need to do to rectify any gaps and the next steps needed to extend their learning

· Teachers – assessment gives detailed knowledge of children’s achievements which they can use to inform future learning, their planning and their teaching

· Parents and carers – assessment informs regular reports on their child’s progress in meeting expectations and ensures that teachers, children and parents can work together to secure learning and raise standards for all children

· School leaders and governors – assessment provides information that they can analyse and use to make decisions about  future actions to improve standards, learning and  teaching in the school

· External agencies and partners (such as those schools organisations in which a pupil will receive the next stage of their education, or the Council, the DfE and Ofsted) – assessment provides the evidence that a school knows its children well and sets and maintains high standards in learning and teaching as part of the school’s public accountability to its children’s future.

 

What are schools and settings statutorily required to assess?

Teachers carry out day to day assessments and checks on children’s understanding and progress as part of their day to day teaching. Statutory, formal assessment procedures and examinations also exist to measure attainment against national expectations. Our children’s achievements are compared nationally with all those children of the same age and against schools in the local authority and in England.

 

What is assessment?

Assessment is much broader than just 'taking a test'; there are 2 main types of assessment - summative and formative assessment.  Summative assessment looks at what a pupil has learnt at the end of a period of time, relative to the learning objective and relevant national standards.  Summative assessment may take the form of a test, observation, conversation or task.  Formative assessment (or assessment for learning) takes place during learning and allows the teacher to adapt learning to address gaps or extend the pupil.

 

 

 

 

Summative assessment

The new National Curriculum was tested at Key Stages 1 and 2 for the first time in 2016 based on interim frameworks.  In 2017, testing will follow the same format as shown below.

 

At Key Stage 1 pupils sit

· 2 reading papers;

· 2 mathematics papers.

 

These papers will be teacher marked and the raw scores for each subject (set of papers) will be converted into a scaled score and each child will receive an overall result indicating whether or not they have achieved the required standard on the test.

 

In 2016, at Key Stage 2 pupils sit

· 1 reading paper;

· 2 papers designed to assess grammar, punctuation and spelling;

· 3 mathematics papers.

 

These papers will be externally marked and the raw scores for each subject (set of papers) will be converted into a scaled score and each child will receive an overall result indicating whether or not they have achieved the required standard on the test.

 

We administer the following statutory formal assessment procedures to measure outcomes against all schools locally and nationally.

 

 

In addition to the statutory tests we record progress towards end of year expectations in each class at least 3 times a year.  All assessment is made by the teacher using some formal tests but also based on what they observe in class.  Writing is teacher assessed in all classes through regular Big Writes (at least 2 each half term).

 

 

Pupils in Year 1 – 6 also complete the Burt reading assessment which gives an indication of decoding / sight reading skills.

 

 

In addition to these more formal forms of testing, class teachers may also administer spelling, multiplication and mental mathematics tests throughout the year.

 

Formative assessment

Assessment for Learning (AfL) takes place within every lesson through a variety of practices.  The key features of AfL at Our Lady's are

· clear learning objectives and success criteria for each lesson - these are in pupil-friendly language;

· use of questioning techniques to assess knowledge and understanding and to extend thinking around a topic;

· valuing the responses and opinions of all pupils and encouraging them to see errors as a learning opportunity;

· giving specific and constructive feedback which indicates how pupils can improve and the steps they need to take in order to do so;

· encouraging pupils to reflect on their learning and to monitor their own progress, by means of self and peer assessment;

· pupil involvement in setting personal targets to challenge and review their progress against end of year targets.

 

 

 

 

How will attainment be reported?

Due to the changes that have been made in assessment, pupils’ attainment will be gauged as commencing, developing, secure, advancing or deep for the year group they are working in.  The pupil assessment group have selected a colour scheme to indicate the different codes and make them easier to follow in class.  Exceptionally, some pupils may be working within the learning objectives of a different year group and this will be indicated when it is different to their school year. 

 

 

In the EYFS pupils are assessed across the 7 areas of learning and in their Characteristics of Learning.  Attainment is recorded in age bands and in June pupils are assessed against the Early Learning Goals (ELG) at which time they will be judged as emerging, expected or exceeding for each ELG.

Pupil attainment will be reported to parents at parents’ evenings; on end of year reports and where applicable on class provision maps.

Pupil involvement

On Monday mornings all pupils are given the opportunity to respond to teacher feedback in their books.  These sessions allow pupils to improve their work and consolidate their understanding and are combined with a review of their targets.  This means all pupils are aware of how to produce work that meets expectations and what their next steps are.  As part of these learning review sessions, pupils also consider their learning behaviour and how they have used their learnt skills across the curriculum.

In addition, there is a pupil assessment group who have worked with the Leadership Team to develop assessment within the school and in designing class posters to support pupil independence and their understanding of assessment and their next steps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 What are the key features of our assessment procedures?

Our assessment procedures will continue to give attention to helping children to meet or exceed national expectations and achieve the highest standards they can over each key stage of their learning. The National Curriculum sets out what our children are to learn but we decide how we are to assess our children’s attainment and progress over the key stage.

 

Our assessment procedures will:

• Make clear to all children our expectations in terms of learning behaviours
  • Set out the attitudes and behaviours we expect of children when in the classroom
  • Show them how work is to be presented in their books and establish that any unacceptable work is to be done again to the standard required by the school
  • Tell children that they will succeed and acknowledge how and when they are becoming successful learners to establish self-confidence and good learning behaviours
• Share learning objectives with children
  • Share learning objectives at the beginning of a phase of learning – a week or a lesson as appropriate, and highlight them during the lesson and in plenaries, using language that children understand
  • Use these objectives as the basis for questioning and feedback during the learning activities as well as in plenaries
  • Use this ongoing assessment to inform planning and to make any adjustments to the learning objectives for the week and future weeks
  • Refer children back to earlier learning objectives to demonstrate and review progress over time
• Help children to recognise the standards they are to achieve and have already achieved
  • Share and discuss children’s work explaining how and why they have met the standards expected
  • Give children clear success criteria that relate to the learning objectives
  • Set clear and shared expectations about the presentation of work and model how this is to be achieved with examples to set out standards -assessment and peer-assessment
• Involve children in self and peer-assessment
  • Provide time for children to read and respond to teacher’s feedback and assess how successfully they carried out the tasks set
  • Give children opportunities to talk in pairs or small groups about what they have learned, what they have found difficult and what they might do differently to improve
  • Ask children to explain the steps in their thinking and justify their decisions and reasoning
  • Model with children the language of assessment that they can use to review their own and their peer’s learning and to identify next steps in learning
  • Establish a classroom ethos that enables a critical review of work to be undertaken that is seen as positive and not taken as any personal criticism
  • Engage the children in feedback through their responses to teacher’s comments and giving children a short additional challenge to carry out that highlights what they have learned or what they need to correct
• Provide feedback which leads to children recognising their next steps and how to take them
  • Provide immediate oral feedback that helps children to identify mistakes, correct errors and take the next steps needed to move their learning on
  • Mark work sharing criteria, give feedback and identify next steps and targets
  • Acknowledge success and give positive feedback but avoid giving excessive or underserved praise
  • Ensure feedback is constructive and identifies what a child has done well, what needs to be done to improve, and how to do it
  • Identify the next steps for individual children and where appropriate for groups who can collaborate on a common approach to improvement or progress assessment information

 

 

• Involve teachers and children in reviewing and reflecting on assessment information
  • Identify carefully progressed steps in learning through the learning outcomes and success criteria to enable children to see their progress, thus building confidence and self-esteem
  • Use appropriate tasks that will provide us with quality assessment information by showing children’s thinking as well as the answer
  • Provide time for children and teachers to reflect on what they have learned and understood, and to identify where they still have difficulties
  • Pupil involvement in setting personal targets to challenge learning
  • In the light of our assessments evaluate teaching effectiveness and deployment of resources, learning tasks and organisation of learners, and make any adjustments to improve learning and raise standards

 

What procedures will be in place to ensure assessment is rigorous?

We draw on the expertise that is available in our school, locally and in partnership with other schools, and nationally as further information and guidance is made public. We implement monitoring and evaluation procedures regularly (see timetable) and maintain a continuing overview of the whole in-school assessment through:

• Monitoring of children’s’ work
  • Provide time for subject group leaders to carry out regular scrutiny of work to monitor pitch and expectations, coverage, marking and feedback in books and to review children’s progress with their teachers (See also pupil progress meetings below)
  • Senior leaders will carry out learning walks and lesson observations, review books and interview children about their learning and steps to improve
  • Senior leaders will quality assure the strengths and weaknesses identified by staff following their own and subject or phase leaders analyses of progress and standards in learning
• Moderation across years groups and phases of learning
  • Provide time for key staff to carry out regular moderation of assessment and standards within and across key stages
  • Set out clear expectations about marking and feedback to children that everyone puts into practice
• Formal testing
  • Use of past test or examination papers and commercially produced materials to provide an independent check on how well children are doing and to compare outcomes against judgements made using a range of other assessment evidence
  • Use item analyses of these tests to find out where there are areas of overall strength and weakness in children’s knowledge in order to inform how we organise and teach this in future
• Pupil progress meetings
  • Senior and phase leaders, teachers carry out a review of children’s progress in each year group and class and identify the extent to which children are meeting expectations
  • Analyse ongoing and past performance data against expectations to review and if necessary set new or revised targets for children to achieve and evaluate the effectiveness of intervention and assessment strategies
  • Use the outcomes of the meeting to target intervention for groups and to review the provision map for children across the ability spectrum
• Professional development and support
  • Key staff attend local and national meetings to learn more about assessment and reporting arrangements
  • Cross-schools moderation events provide an opportunity to ensure expectations are set at the right level and pitch
  • Local authority provision and support includes updated curriculum maps and schemes that highlight the key learning in core subjects and offer model for assessment
• Parents’ evenings and meetings
  • Provide opportunities for parents/carers to discuss their child’s progress and to highlight any key issues that are affecting the child’s learning
  • Update parents on changes to the curriculum and assessment arrangements, and identify ways in which they can support their child’s learning
  • Discuss the assessments and comments in children’s books and statutory reports to parents