Assessment Without Levels

Parent Forum Thursday 19th May 2016

How we assess and track children’s progress and achievement

Outcomes to achieve…

• To understand the key principles of our assessment approach.

• To find out what more parents would like

the school to do to help them understand their child’s achievements and progress in school?

What are the changes? Fundamental differences in thinking

• New National Curriculum is a performance model. It defines what is taught and what is assessed.

• A “mastery” model: more depth.

• Teacher accountability is intensified: Greater assurance that children have learnt (not just experienced) what has been taught.

• Curriculum is the new pathway (rather than a level) to children showing they have achieved standards.

• Assessment needs to show whether children are ready to move on to next standard or require further teaching.

A different way of thinking

Old Curriculum

• Topic selected from long term planning

• Teaching and learning activities designed around topics

• Activities differentiated to meet children’s different skills/NC levels

New Curriculum

• Standards identified and clustered (can use topics to link)

• Assessments designed to show progress towards standards taught

• Teaching planned in line with assessments: multiple measures of assessment built into units

Our Curriculum will • Be vibrant, engaging and enthuses children to want to learn, ensuring it is

distinctive, innovative and memorable.

• Be broad and balanced.

• Be well planned to meet children’s needs and interests (co-construction), providing challenge and deep learning opportunities.

• Be grounded in our school Learning Values of developing children’s learning skills, particularly of Independence, Critical and Creative Thinking, Reflectivity and Working Collaboratively as well as our spiritual and moral values as a Church of England school.

• Ensure entitled coverage-all children have opportunity to their full legal entitlement and that there is no needless repetition or omission.

Our curriculum cont…… • promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical

development of children

• Prepares our children for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

• Be thematic and enquiry based in order to dissolve artificial barriers and make real links (where meaningful) across subject concepts and content to deepen learning.

• focus on developing language and communication skills. mathematical and numerical skills and first hand experiential learning.

• Use daily formative assessment and teacher’s knowledge of fine next steps to ensure children’s learning is progressive.

• Use the whole of our learning environment both indoors and out, at school and within the community.

Assessment ‘By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study.’

National Curriculum (2014)

Why abandon “levels”? • No other country uses them • Being “Level 2” doesn’t mean the same thing because its based on “best fit” • Teachers use levels to describe children • Children label themselves • It builds in “different” expectations and therefore it “limits” expectations for some children

The removal of levels was based on the principle that schools are best placed to develop their own high-quality formative assessment systems, which are diagnostic and which are not necessarily nationally referenced. The intention of the performance descriptors is to provide summative assessment at the end of Key Stages 1 (Year 2)and 2 (Year 6) only. They are not intended to inform ongoing assessment.

Underpinning principles of the Hampshire assessment model • Fundamental to the approach is that ‘key ideas’ have to be

understood in order for the children to successfully progress and be able to move into the next phase. Therefore, the approach is about determining how well ideas are understood and how they can be linked into other ideas.

• The approach to assessment requires that teachers move away from the model of periodic assessment and use a strategic overview to ensure that they are continuously aware of the key ideas that they need to ‘take notice of’ and there are moments of ‘stop and think’.

• The model is not a ‘best fit’ model. We assess everything that we need to for every child, as determined by the school curriculum, the school’s agreed progression and the lesson planned. The continuous assessment that is taking place is noticing the understanding of individual children, of each aspect within its own right and in relation to other aspects.

Mastery learning • The Hampshire model expects that children will deepen their grasp of key ideas, over time, rather than move on and leave gaps behind • Through being well taught and given curriculum opportunities they will develop and demonstrate their resourcefulness and versatility, (in an age appropriate way) • This will be evident in their capacity to applying their knowledge, skills and understanding with (sufficient): – Fluency over time – Independence – Resilience to deal with complexity and new contexts • This does not mean that all pupils achieve the same degree of mastery... but it is at least sufficient, so that they can make successful progress through the fundamental ideas. No one left

behind

Manageability: Phases – mapping a curriculum which enables children to demonstrate, apply and combine their competencies in broader and increasingly challenging contexts as the year progresses – mapping the range of assessment foci, appropriate to the year, across all domains – Ensure fundamental ideas are introduced earlier in each year (Phase 1) – Most challenging ideas build upon what is being secured earlier (Phase 2&3) – Working across domains is key to improving mastery

Ongoing (Assessment for Learning) assessment Accurate ongoing assessment of each individual child is at the heart of the assessment model through each phase: – What do children need to know / be able to do / understand by the end of the phase? – What will the development of knowledge, skills and understanding look like within each phase?

– How deeply secured are the aspects for each child?

ASSESSMENT AT WESTERN DOWNLAND OUR ASSESSMENT PRINCIPLES

Assessment at Western Downland enables us to: • secure high aspirations for our children • help children to understand and demonstrate what they know • help children understand what they need to do next to improve their work • plan work that accurately reflects the needs of each child • provide regular and reliable information to parents about how well their child is doing • provide parents, the school leadership team and governors with information that allows them to make judgements about the effectiveness of the school • provide reliable pupil attainment and progress information for external bodies.

Ways in which we assess ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING (formative assessment) is an integral part of learning in every lesson, including how teachers give feedback in marking. Teachers find out, through rich questions, analysis of work, discussions and purposeful tasks, what children know, can do and understand well and where they have misconceptions or gaps in their learning. Teachers then plan the fine next steps to ensure that children are in their learning. TESTING AND SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS are used to support teachers' daily observations in assessing how well children are achieving and to ensure that they are on track to achieve (as a minimum) in line with national expectations. These include: • EYFS – A baseline assessment is carried out in Autumn Term 1 (we use the Early Excellence baseline assessment) and we report to parents at the end of the year on children’s achievements against the Early Years Foundation Stage. Year 1- The national Phonics Check is carried out in June to assess whether children know and can apply their phonics skills to help decode known and unknown words. • Year 2 & 6- National end of key stage tests in mathematics, reading and spelling, punctuation and grammar. Additionally, teachers make assessments in writing and science. Standardised tests such as The Vernon Spelling test and the New Group Reading Test (NGRT) are used annually from year 1 to 6 as an internal check to monitor progress in key skills. Periodically, teachers may also use internal tests to help find out further information about children’s achievements.

MEASURING THE PROGRESS CHILDREN MAKE

Since the removal of National Curriculum Levels, the school has been developing its own systems to measure the progress children make. Each year group curriculum has key knowledge, skills and ideas that children need to master. (See the Phased Assessment Documents for reading, writing and mathematics for more detail.) Teachers track the progress of children against these criteria and make summative judgements about how securely the children have mastered and can apply these. Progress is also tracked from one year to the next to ensure that children who are not secure are supported to close any learning gaps, identifying and overcoming any barriers to learning. Pupil premium funding is used to support this.

What we have focused on this year

• Think about assessment in a non-levels way • Develop ways of regularly eliciting from children what they know,

understand and are skilled at so that we are confident about which parts of the curriculum they have “mastered” and which they still need to learn. (e.g. use of key questions, AfL strategies)

• Ensure all children keep up and act quickly where children have gaps. • Acquire a deep knowledge of what children need to know,

understand and be skilled at and be highly competent in teaching it. • Become familiar with our new tracking systems to accurately track

children’s progress. • Regular and rigorous moderation (within and across schools) to

establish an evidenced commonality of standards

KEEPING PARENTS INFORMED

We are firmly committed to ensuring parents are kept well-informed about how well their child is achieving and involving parents in setting targets and encouraging ways parents can support their child’s learning both within and out of school. This includes: • Termly Parent Consultations which gives parents an opportunity to view children’s work, discuss progress with the teacher, share targets and be provided with ways in which they can support their child’s learning. • An annual written report, including summative assessments on how well children are achieving in relation to national age related expectations. • Parent information workshops to help parents understand how the curriculum is taught and ways in which they can support, such as workshops for teaching phonics and maths calculations. • End of topic celebrations of children’s work where parents and family are invited to share outcomes with their child. • Increasingly we are making use of on- line systems such as “Tapestry” in Early Years, to give parents a daily insight into their child’s learning.

What more would you like from us?