Assessment

At Robert Kett Primary School, we believe that assessment is integral to high quality teaching and learning. It helps us to ensure that our teaching is appropriate and that learners are making expected progress.

Assessment serves many purposes, but the main purpose of assessment in our school is to help us plan for children’s next steps in learning. We share our assessment information with children and parents/carers. We also use the outcomes of assessment to evaluate our provision and to help us improve.

Continuous Assessment/Assessment for Learning (AfL)

Also known as ‘formative assessment’, AfL is the day-to-day, often informal assessment that is used to explore children’s understanding so that the teacher can plan what and how to teach them, in order to develop their understanding further.

Teachers and teaching assistants will:

share the learning objective – so that children know what they are expected to learn

share the success criteria – what it would look like if they achieved the learning objective

observe children – to see how they tackle a task and how well they use their skills and knowledge

ask questions – to challenge thinking and ascertain understanding.

work alongside children in group work – to be able to adapt/extend their learning, and provide personalised learning opportunities and challenge

encourage self and peer assessment – helping children to understand their learning journey

give verbal feedback – to help children identify how well they have done, and what they need to learn next

mark children’s work – affirming their achievement and identifying next steps.

Summative Assessment

Summative assessment is a formal summing-up of what a child knows. This can be achieved by collating formative assessment information (AfL) and by using focused assessment tasks or tests. At Robert Kett we collate our assessment evidence throughout the term and analyse the information termly in order to:

  • inform pupils and parents/carers of their child's progress

  • identify gaps in learning to inform planning and provision for the individual child, class, year group and school

  • identify where intervention is needed and to evaluate the impact of previous intervention

  • support whole school self-evaluation to help us improve further.

Following an initial trial of the ‘Practical Assessment’ system we have now moved to using SIMs* as a tool for gathering our observations and assessment evidence together. This helps the teacher to identify gaps in children’s learning, which are then used to inform their planning. The system also enables attainment and progress to be tracked by child, class, year group and the whole school, to support the school’s self-evaluation as well as providing useful evidence for governors, the local authority and school inspectors.

Each child is assessed against the Attainment Targets in the Programmes of Study from the National Curriculum. Each term, a summative assessment is made that judges whether the child is:

  • emerging – beginning to develop skills and knowledge in the objectives for the year group

  • developing – working towards the expected attainment for the end of the year

  • secure – achieved the objectives expected for the end of the year group

  • mastered – has a deep understanding of all the year’s objectives

More able children are expected to develop a deeper understanding and be able to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts rather than move onto the objectives for the next year group. Children with Special Educational Needs may be working with skills and knowledge from preceding year groups.

Class teachers will discuss how each child is progressing with parents and carers at termly parents’ evenings and summarise their children’s attainment and progress in their annual report.

*SIMs is the management information system we use as a school which enables our assessment information to be analysed alongside other contextual information.

National Assessments

New tests were introduced for the end of KS2 from September 2015.

Reception

Children entering Reception are assessed against the Early Years Development Matters

Year 1

The Phonics Screening takes place in June.

Year 2

Teacher Assessment at the end of Key Stage 1 in mathematics, reading and writing will be informed by pupils’ scores in tests that are externally set but internally marked.

Year 4

Multiplication Check takes place in June.