Assessment
We believe that effective assessment is crucial in enabling teaching staff to ensure that children are supported and challenged to make the best progress possible in their learning.
The driving purpose of assessment is to give our teaching staff more information about each child’s learning.
Our approach to assessment has at its heart assessment for learning; this is when teaching staff assess children’s learning in the classroom and provide feedback there and then along with planning for additional support or challenge in the next lesson. Children are also taught to self and peer assess their learning, reflecting on what they have achieved and where they could do even better. This type of assessment is happening all day, every day in our classrooms.
Alongside this assessment for learning children complete assessment papers as part of the cycle of assessment of learning. These include the statutory SATs assessments at the end of Year 2 and Year 6 and other papers infrequently through the year.
In Year 1 children do the Phonics Screening check. If they do not meet the threshold in Year 1 they redo the check in Year 2. In Year 4 children do the Multiplication Tables Check.
We talk carefully to the children about formal assessments, emphasising that they are not a test of them but of our teaching. Teachers rarely talk to children about their attainment point or level.
We give parents regular written and verbal reports on their child’s progress so that teachers, children and parents are all working together.
To record, monitor and inform pupil progress we use a piece of software called Target Tracker. To track pupil’s attainment, Target Tracker allows teachers to highlight the curriculum objectives a child has achieved and see those that they need more support with. Target Tracker also uses a system of steps based on a carefully considered logical approach to assessment.
To meet age related expectations, children should reach the secure (s) step by the end of the appropriate year. For example a child in Year 4 should reach the step 4S.
Some children will be working on a different curriculum to the majority of their year group peers and their learning will be assessed appropriately.