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.