Day-to-day (Formative Assessment)
Formative Assessment is a continuous process, carried out by teachers in the course of their teaching through means such as informal observations, feedback from peer and self-assessments, plenary sessions and written and oral responses to tasks. It is used to guide the progress of individual pupils and involves identifying each child’s progress in areas of the curriculum, determining what they have already learned and what therefore should be the next stage of learning.
Summative Assessment
Summative Assessments are carried out throughout a child’s time in primary school but become more common as a child gets older. Children in Year 1 undertake the government’s Phonics Screening Check, Year 2 children take part in the statutory Key Stage 1 Assessment process, children in Years 3, 4 and 5 are given more formal assessments to help them apply what they have learnt independently in more formal situations in preparation for the end of Key Stage 2 statutory tests.
Assessing without Levels
The biggest change in recent Assessment reforms was the removal of the previous assessment against levels system. Levels were introduced as a method of reporting against the level descriptors in the old National Curriculum and became the language of assessment for over 10 years. Since September 2014 schools have been given the freedom to make their own arrangements for pupil tracking data in order to help determine whether pupils are on track to meet end of Key Stage expectations.
Age Related Expectations (ARE)
We assess children's attainment and progress in relation to Age Related Expectations i.e. against where the new National Curriculum indicates children should be at a particular stage.
Statutory Assessment
Key Stage 1 - New statutory end of Key Stage 1 Teacher Assessment have been introduced for Maths, Reading, Writing, Speaking & Listening and Science. Teachers will assess pupils as meeting one of several performance descriptors for Maths, Reading, Writing and Speaking & Listening and there will be one performance descriptor for Science for the new expected standard.
The performance descriptors are linked to the National Curriculum Programmes of Study.
Also from 2015 - 2016 a new statutory end of Key Stage 1 test (marked internally) for Maths, Reading and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS) was introduced . The results from these tests will help inform the reported Teacher Assessments.
Key Stage 2 - A statutory end of Key Stage 2 Teacher Assessment system is in place for Writing and Science. Teachers will make judgements against performance descriptors.
A test (externally marked) has been introduced for Maths, Reading and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS). This will be reported as a scaled score (80 -120), with 100 meaning they have achieved the Expected Standard).
Parents will receive a report on their child's scaled score alongside the average scaled score of the School and nationally.
School performance will be measured on a new National Floor Standard.