What Makes Great Assessment? 

Dame Alison Peacock: ‘There are three key pillars of education: pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. For too long we have allowed the third of these to act as a dispassionate judge of our teaching instead of building our expertise as assessors.’

‘Great assessment enables both children and teachers to understand what has been learnt and identifies specific areas where misconceptions have occurred or where more practice is needed. Assessment that is used formatively, actively informs pedagogy.’

Great assessment is great responsive teaching. Assessment is inextricable from teaching, and the quality of one is dependent on the quality of the other.

The Assessment Model at the Calder Learning Trust

Formative Assessment

• Classroom based formative assessments occur frequently, are low stakes and provide rapid feedback. This is the most common form of assessment in our classrooms.
• Formative assessment tests specific knowledge and skills to identify gaps and have an immediate impact on lesson planning.
• Formative assessment tasks are designed to strengthen retrieval and improve retention.
• Their aim is to identifying consequences/ a course of action (e.g immediate impact on the curriculum focus and content).

Standardised Faculty Assessment (Deep Marking)

• Standardised faculty assessments assess students’ understanding of a unit of work but might progress throughout the year to test for recall of knowledge and skills across a series of units.
• Thought will be given to the range of approaches that we use as vehicles for students to demonstrate their learning.
• Assessments will provide evidence for the whole school monitoring of student attainment and progress and are linked to whole school assessment points.

Formal, summative assessment

• Formal, whole school summative assessments which are high stakes and infrequent. They test knowledge and skills across a wider domain
• The outcomes of these assessments influence our medium or long term curriculum plans. Their aim is to create a shared meaning of student progress by ranking students across a cohort.

Baseline Assessment in Key Stage 3

Pupils’ progress in Year 7 and 8 will be continuously monitored by considering their progress from a baseline assessment (CAT test) taken in the first half term each year. These tests will provide a nationally comparable standard age score which can range from 70-130, with 100 being the national average. Student progress will then be monitored from their starting band, as outlined below:

Progress

Each subject will have a progress indicator which will focus on the progress a child has made from their starting point. This measure will be based on the work that has been produced, assessments in lessons and how the teacher feels the student is progressing; in other words, is the student currently making the expected progress to meet the attainment expected? Progress will be measured using the following scale. 

The most beneficial aspect of measuring progress through this system is that the discussion we have with pupils and parents revolves around key points of learning rather than a grade or a number. In our view, this is the best possible preparation for GCSE.

If you have any further questions about the system, please contact us at the school address.

Key Stage 4

The reporting system at Key Stage 4 we will continue to report on current attainment in the form of a grade in the new 9-1 grade system. The progress grade will relate to how well students are working towards their current target grade or ‘route’.

Student targets for GCSE and vocational courses will be set according to a combination of baseline scores and their attainment and progress during Key stage 3. Teaching staff will be encouraged to amend a target if it is felt to be too low, to ensure they are aspirational. This may mean that your son/daughter’s Route is more varied by subject than it has been in previous years. Students will first receive their GCSE target grades in the Spring term of Year 9, so as to assist them make good choices in selecting their GCSE option subjects.

Progress

The progress grades for students from Year 9 onwards will therefore have a slightly different meaning from those in Years 7 and 8. These are shown below:

Attitudes to Learning

Student effort will continue to be recorded as part of the tracking process. Teacher judgment is used to assign a colour-coded grade relating to a student’s attitude to learning

GCSE Grades

If any parents remain unsure about the new GCSE grading system, the graphic below outlines how the numerical grades relate to the old letter grades that were used.

Reporting to Parents

We will report on both progress and effort on a termly basis. A mock–up of the report for both Key Stage 3 and 4 is shown below: