Assessment
Assessing Progress and Attainment
The Government introduced a new National Curriculum in 2014 and with it came very big changes in the way children are to be assessed in schools.
From September 2015 schools have no longer used levels or Average Point Score (APS) to track progress. This means we will no longer be explaining how children are doing in terms of a level e.g. 2a or 4c, or average point scores of e.g. 17 or 25.
Assessments will now be made against end of year group expectations. The aim is that by the end of the school year, most children will be working at the expected levels for their age group.
The new National Curriculum is harder. This might mean that children who had been working at average levels may now be working at below average.
We will look closely at children’s progress throughout the year.
To measure progress, each term we will have an assessment week when the children will be tested in Reading and Maths. They will also do a piece of writing.
The reading and maths tests will give a standardised score with 100 being average.
What do Standardised Scores mean?
A child working at below age-related expectations or who achieved a score of less than 100 is likely to have extra support to help them to move closer to average or above.
|
Standardised Scores |
||||||
|
Less than 69 |
70-89 |
90 - 99 |
100 |
101 - 115 |
115 - 130 |
More than 130 |
|
Well below |
Below |
Just below |
100 is the national average score |
Average |
Above |
Well above |
As well as testing the children, we will be recording their progress over the year linked to the end of year expectations.
We will be using judgments of beginning, developing and secure to describe the progress children are making towards the end of year expectations.
- A child may be assessed as ‘beginning’ if they can do this sometimes, with support and after explicit teaching.
- A child may be assessed as ‘developing’ if they can do it with limited support and are starting to use the skills in other work e.g. using full stops.
- A child may be assessed as being ‘secure’ if they are able to do it regularly, without support and usually in other work.
In exceptional cases children may be judged as ‘exceeding’ the expected judgements for their year group. This means that they have achieved 100% of the expectations for their year group and are working on a more challenging set of end of year expectations.
As with all new systems, we will work to improve them over the year.
If you have any questions about our system for assessing and tracking pupil progress please ask.
