Assessment

The data will regularly be monitored and shared with parents so that parents, pupil, and teachers understand where any support or intervention is needed.  Our intervention strategies are designed to nurture each pupil's academic and personal development. Personal programmes of support will be provided; for example, for pupils with learning difficulties and disabilities, for more able pupils, for those learning English as an additional language or with specific English and Maths needs.

Formal assessment cycles will be conducted every term, and at the end of these cycles, the school will feedback information to parents. At this time, we will report the attainment and progress of pupils in all their academic subjects, including English and maths

Our assessment practice will, therefore, be more regular and rigorous than the traditional approach to assessment in primary school. We will know where pupils are regarding their learning and will share this with pupils and parents. We believe this rigorous approach allows us to identify any pupils who are struggling and act quickly to provide the necessary support.

Please click on any box below to see the individual elements of our Assessment.

Tracking Attainment and Progress

To track pupil attainment our school has created a bespoke system in Bromcom.  This performs the function of communicating progression and attainment in a simple format that may be aggregated to produce reports of overall and average progress.  This is based on a carefully considered logical approach to assessment and follows on from the assessment system in the Early Years.

Attainment has been broken down into a series of bands (1-6).  These bands describe the attainment targets or Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) of each year group.  The terminology has been selected for consistency and clarity.  The vast majority of pupils will be working in the band that matches their year group.  However, to ensure that learning is personalised to the needs of the individual, it is possible that some children may be working in a band below their respective year group.  Teachers will look to stretch and challenge higher attaining pupils by giving opportunities to broaden and deepen their understanding.

For reading, writing and maths, teachers will assess the children’s attainment on an ongoing basis against the KPI’s.  For other subjects, this will be completed either at the end of a unit or work or at a specific time.  They will base these judgements on a range of evidence including work produced in class (both written and verbal), observations, discussions with children and summative tasks/tests.

Each statement can be assessed as either emerging, developing, secure  or mastered.  Teachers' use the NOFAN approach (which stands for Never, Occasionally, Frequently, Always, Naturally) when assessing statements. On a termly basis, teachers will then review this picture of attainment that is building for each child, and assign a step and stage judgement that best fits where that child is with their learning.

Each band is divided into three broad sections:

• Mild – Pupil learning is chiefly focussed on the criteria for the band. There may be minimal elements of the previous band still to gain complete confidence in.
• Spicy – Pupil learning is fully focussed on the criteria for the band. Up to 70% of the statements are confidently achieved.
• Hot – Confidence in all the criteria for the band. There may be pupil learning still focussed on gaining thorough confidence in some elements, but the broad expectations for the band have been met.

Each band has then been further broken down into four steps: emerging (e), developing (d), secure (s), mastered (m).  This is designed to allow class teachers to represent and report progress for a pupil where they may not feel that the best fit is within the next section.  For example, a pupil may be assessed as Band 2 Mild Emerging  in the Autumn term in Year 2.  The next time the class teacher records a summative assessment, they may not feel the pupil has progressed to 2 Mild Secure, but the pupil has made progress.  An assessment of 2 Mild Developing allows that progress to be represented and will feed through to overall class and Key Stage reporting.

To meet age related expectations, children should reach the Spicy Secure/Mastered step by the end of the appropriate year.  To move from the Spicy  in one band to the next is 3 steps progress, which equates to an average of 1 step or 1 point of progress each  term.  This is on-track or expected progress.

Year 1 pupils who are working on the beginning of the Year 1 band could still be assessed using the EYFS e,g. Reception very mild, Reception mild, Reception spicy  band steps. The engagement model and pre Year 1 band will be used for pupils at KS1 and KS2 who are working below the standard of the national curriculum assessments and not engaged in subject-specific study.

EYFS

 In Early Years teachers assess children on entry to Nursery and Reception using a bespoke Baseline check.  In the first half of the Autumn term, teaching staff observe the children in a variety of task and play based situations to facilitate assessment judgements to be made against a set of statements.  This then gives a numeric score against which future progress and attainment may be measured.

The Government Reception Baseline

Reception pupils participate in the reception baseline assessment (RBA) within the first 6 weeks of starting reception.  The purpose of the assessment is to provide the starting point for a progress measure that will help parents understand how well schools support their pupils to progress between reception and year 6.

In Reception, children are continuing to be assessed against the Foundation Stage Profile.  Evidence for judgements against each of the statements is collected through observations, books, and discussions, and depending on these judgements children may be described as having achieved the ‘Good Level of Development’ measure at the end of the Reception year.  The school engages in regular moderation of these judgements within our pyramid of schools.  The data is recorded on a termly basis in Bromcom  for monitoring and target setting.

Reception Baseline Parent and Carer Guide.

Phonics Screening

 In June, all Year 1 pupils’ progress in phonics will be assessed.  Each child will be assessed individually by a teacher.  They will be asked to read 20 real and 20 pseudo-words to assess their decoding ability.  Any child currently in Year 2 who either did not take the test in Year 1 or did not achieve the pass mark last year will also take the test.

Phonics Screening Parent and Carer Guide

End of Key Stage Assessment

Scaled scores help test results to be reported consistently from one year to the next. National curriculum tests are designed to be as similar as possible year on year, but slight differences in difficulty will occur between years. Scaled scores maintain their meaning over time so that two pupils achieving the same scaled score in different years will have demonstrated the same attainment.

A scaled score of 100 will always represent the ‘expected standard’.

A pupil’s scaled score will be based on their raw score. The raw score is the total number of marks a pupil receives in a test, based on the number of questions they answered correctly. The pupil’s raw score will be translated into a scaled score using a conversion table.  In 2016 KS2 tests STA will publish test results on the NCA tools website, and each pupil will receive a raw score (the number of raw marks awarded), a scaled score and confirmation of whether they attained the expected standard.

Key Stage 2 Tests

From 2016, a new KS2 national curriculum tests has been introduced consisting of:

• English reading: reading booklet and associated answer booklet
• English grammar, punctuation, and spelling Paper 1: short answer questions
• English grammar, punctuation, and spelling Paper 2: spelling
• mathematics Paper 1: Arithmetic
• mathematics Paper 2: reasoning
• mathematics Paper 3: reasoning

There will only be 1 set of tests for each subject. The tests will include a small number of questions designed to assess the most able pupils so separate tests, such as the previous level 6 tests, are no longer required.

The insane mathematics test has been replaced with an arithmetic test.

Most children in Year Six will sit the tests, and they will be administered in a week in May.

In addition to the outcomes of the tests, teachers will also use a broad range of other evidence to inform their teacher assessments. 

For reading, maths, and science, depending on a child’s depth of understanding of the KS2 programme of study, they may be teacher assessed as either working at the expected standard or working below the expected standard. 

For writing, there is a broader range of possible teacher assessment outcomes as this is the sole measure of pupil attainment in writing at the end of KS2.  For writing, they may be assessed as either working towards the expected standard, working at the expected standard, or working at a greater depth within the expected standard. 

Additionally, if a pupil has reached the chronological age where an outcome must be reported, but the pupil is deemed not to have completed the key stage 2 programme of study, then they may be teacher assessed in reading, writing and maths as having achieved either the foundations for the expected standard, early development of the expected standard or growing development of the expected standard.

KS2 SATs Parent and Carer Guide

Year 4 Multiplication Test

Year 4 Multiplication Test information for Parents and_Carers.pdf