September 30th 2010

Gullane Primary School

Assessment within the new Scottish

Curriculum.

What does it ‘look and sound’ like

here in Gullane Primary School?

September 2010

September 30th 2010

We hope this short leaflet may be of interest to parents and endeavours to set out where

schools are with assessment. The following is an Extract from Building the Curriculum

5(BTC5). This document was published at the end of 2009. Schools are working with the

content of this document to ensure their planning for assessment matches expectations. The

documents entitled ‘Building the Curriculum’ are published by the Scottish Government;

numbers 3,4&5 have been published so far each one dealing with a different focus. These

documents may be found on the internet if you are interested.

“Assessment should be an integral part of day-to-day learning and teaching, carefully

planned at the same time as programmes and experiences, so that it reflects the

learning, provides an emerging picture of progress and achievement in skills for all

learners, and enables both staff and learners to play a full part in gathering and

evaluating evidence and planning next steps in learning.” (BTC5)

“In order to gather good quality evidence of learners’ progress through relevant

experiences, staff will plan to use a range of approaches that reflect the breadth,

challenge and application of learning and the wide range of skills being developed. The

active involvement of children and young people in assessment is essential to ensure they

have a well-developed sense of ownership of their learning and help one another.”

(BTC5)

“Curriculum for Excellence focuses on a broader range of knowledge and understanding,

skills, attributes and capabilities that children and young people develop in a range of

contexts. This means that assessment in Curriculum for Excellence will involve a broad

range of approaches that allow children and young people to demonstrate what they

know, understand and can do. Assessment will support learning and promote learner

engagement resulting in greater breadth and depth in learning, including a greater focus

on the secure development of knowledge, understanding and skills. To ensure children

and young people are making progress across all aspects of planned learning, assessment

will place a greater emphasis on literacy and numeracy across the curriculum, health and

well-being, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and higher order skills,

including creativity”. (BTC5)

All schools are on a similar path in managing this new curriculum and some schools may have

made more or less progress than we have here at Gullane. The key is that we keep in touch

with our colleagues in other cluster schools and with other clusters in this authority.

Assessment in Gullane.

After many years of using and understanding the language of 5-14 levels many parents will

want information on how their child is managing in school. Many ask ‘How is my child doing in

the class?’ and really what they want to know is ‘How are they in relation to everyone else in

the class?’

We do not have a set of ‘tests’ that will say that a child is at whatever level as before in 5-

14. Learning and Teaching Scotland are currently developing a set of National Assessment

Resources(NARS) for staff to access. These NARS are not ‘tests’ but a range of materials

September 30th 2010

that have been developed to support class teacher assessment. This bank will become

available to class teachers over the session and will be added to in subsequent sessions.

In line with CfE ethos, at Gullane we are developing our assessment processes in keeping with

the philosophies of Building the Curriculum 4 and 5. We have an interim school policy to

support staff as we move towards a more child centered form of assessment and work

through ways to ensure we record formative assessment for learning and quality assessment

of learning.

We recognise the need for a range of assessment evidence including evidence of progression

in skills as well as knowledge and understanding. We recognise there is need for moderation

and sharing of assessment standards across clusters and authorities.

We understand the importance of sharing the assessment processes with the children we

teach so they can see where they are with any piece of learning and know what they need to

do to achieve the next step in their learning.

The expectations about progression through curriculum levels for nursery and primary school

age pupils are shown below. (As described by the Scottish Government)

Early Level describes the experiences and outcomes for pupils in pre school and

Primary 1

First level describes the experiences and outcomes for pupils in Primary 2-4

Second Level describes the experiences and outcomes for pupils in Primary 5-7

Pupils will be described as either - developing, consolidating or secure within a level. It may

be that some pupils will have the same description for most of their school careers in

primary. This is fine. This will also be the language used in the report at the end of session

and we will be able to give a fuller picture of this later in the session.

The new curriculum focuses on developing teaching and learning where pupils have a range of

experiences to develop their knowledge, understanding and skills as well as a depth and

breadth of experiences.

In Gullane Primary staff keep a range of assessment information, comments and notes. We

have an interim policy on assessment as we know that there will be changes and developments

to come.

E.g. Each class teacher will store between 4 and 5 pieces of writing across a session. At

least 2 of these pieces of writing would focus on imaginative writing- story and/or poem- and

the other pieces would focus on functional writing such as posters/leaflets/letters and such

like. We call these pieces ‘tracked’ pieces as the class teacher will have marked them with a

focus on expected content/outcomes for age/stage/ability. This has been running for some

years now.

Staff monitor pupils’ progress in reading, numeracy and mathematical skill, health & well

being, expressive arts, science, technologies, RME and social subjects. The early years’ pupils

have a different focus and expectation to say a P6 pupil. The assessment procedures and

information gathering is age/stage appropriate.

September 30th 2010

Many forms of assessment recording are acceptable/appropriate such as; photographs, video

footage, drawings, discussions with a pupil or group of pupils, content of learning logs,

dialogue between teacher and pupil, notes in jotters and such like.

We also focus on life skills – this area is covered in a document entitled Building the

Curriculum 4. We at Gullane have developed a set of key skills which we feel supports the

development of these key skills in pupils from early years’ to upper stages.

This may be appropriate for any age/stage depending on what was asked for and what was

developed by the teachers/pupils

E.G. Learning Outcome: Decision Making

Key Attributes/Performance Criteria:

□ seeing the need for a decision

□ entering into the decision-making process

□ reaching a decision

□ looking at options, seeking advice, drawing conclusions

□ seeking consensus

□ being equipped to either compromise or to defend an opinion

□ understanding the reasons for decisions and their consequences

□ taking responsibility for decisions

Other: _______________________________________________

We will still assess spelling – maybe not always with a weekly test, we will check and assess

knowledge in maths where appropriate such as whether they have grasped the concept of

place value or equivalent fractions or basic table facts (your help is greatly appreciated

here!). Following a block of teaching in social studies focusing on the Victorians/Romans etc

we will assess how pupils have learned and what they have learned using a variety of the

methods described. When a block of science on say ‘Sound and Light’ has been covered we

may ask the pupils to carry out an experiment and record their findings in line with an agreed

format. We will maintain rigour and standards at all times.

Until we have more information on how a national assessment resource item will ‘work’ and

how useful they will be we will continue to gather a range of quality assessment material on

each pupil. As always, staff will continue to gather a range of evidence and be able to talk

with you about your child and focus on what is relevant for your child at the time.

M.R. Tremmel

Head Teacher

Gullane Primary

September 2010