How assessment links to national guidance & requirements

The curriculum requires that children are able to independently access the skills taught in year groups across a wide range of contexts. They are revisiting and deepening their understanding of what they have learnt, improving their ability to apply learning in as many different ways as possible. All children will have the opportunity to master the full breadth of the curriculum for their year group and should not be pushed to their next stage of learning too early. 

Key definitions

‘Attainment’ is what a pupil or pupils is/are achieving at a particular point in time.

‘Progress’ is the improvement a pupil or pupils has/have demonstrated over a given period.

‘Formative assessment’ is where the assessment of a pupil or pupils’ attainment and/or progress directly shapes and impacts on the teaching, learning and support provided – an on-going cycle of adapting practice to take account of what has worked/been achieved so far.  Examples of formative assessment activities are given on the next page.

‘Summative assessment’ is the overall assessments of a pupil or pupils’ attainment and/or progress typically at the end of a project, topic, term or year.  Examples for summative assessments are given on the next page.

Forms of assessment and their purpose

REAch2 schools use three broad forms of assessment, each with its own purpose.

1. Day-to-day in-school formative assessment, for example:

• Question and answer during class
• Quality next step marking of pupils’ work
• Observational assessment
• Regular short re-cap quizzes
• Scanning work for pupil attainment and development
• Peer review, marking & feedback
• Ascertaining how much pupils know and remember about the taught wider curriculum

Day to day in-school/remote learning formative assessment has different purposes for different stakeholders:

• For pupils: helps them to measure their knowledge and understanding against learning objectives and wider outcomes and to identify where they need to target their efforts to improve.
• For parents: provides them with a broad picture of where their children’s strengths and weaknesses lie and what they need to do to improve.
• For teachers: is an integral part of teaching and learning. It allows teachers to understand pupil performance on a continuing basis. It enables teachers to identify when pupils are struggling, when they have consolidated learning and when they are ready to progress. In this way, it supports teachers to provide appropriate support or extension as necessary. It also enables teachers to evaluate their own teaching of particular topics or concepts and to plan future lessons accordingly.

• For school leaders: formative assessment provides a level of assurance for school leaders. If school leaders are confident their staff are carrying out effective formative assessment, they can be assured that problems will be identified at the individual level and that every child will be appropriately supported to make progress and meet expectations.

2. In-school summative assessment, for example:

• End of year assessments
• Short end of topic or unit assessments
• Reviews for pupils with SEN and disabilities
• Spelling quiz

In-school summative assessment has different purposes for different stakeholders:

• For pupils: provides them with information about how well they have learned and understood a topic or course of work taught over a period of time. It should be used to provide feedback on how they can continue to improve.
• For parents: can be reported to them to explain the achievement, progress and wider outcomes of their children across a period, often a term, half-year or year.
• For teachers: enables them to evaluate both pupil learning at the end of an instructional unit or period and the impact of their own teaching. Both these purposes help teachers to plan for subsequent teaching and learning.
• For school leaders: enables them to monitor the performance of pupil cohorts, to identify where interventions may be required and to work with teachers to ensure pupils are supported to achieve sufficient progress and expected attainment.

3. Nationally standardised summative assessment, for example:

• National Curriculum tests at the end of Key Stage 2
• Phonics Screening Test in Year 1 & Year 2
• Multiplication tables Checks in Year 4

Nationally standardised summative assessment has different purposes for different stakeholders:

• For pupils and parents: to provide information on how pupils are performing in comparison to pupils nationally.
• For parents: to provide them with information on how the school is performing in comparison to schools nationally. This enables parents to hold schools to account and can inform parents’ choice of schools for their children.
• For teachers: to help them understand national expectations and assess their own performance in the broader national context.
• For school leaders and school governors: to enable them to benchmark their school’s performance against other schools locally and nationally, and make judgements about the school’s effectiveness.

Assessment in Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

On entry to school Reception children are assessed in order to ascertain how they compare to age related expectations, in line with the stages of development outlined within Early Years Foundation Stage. This runs alongside the teachers’ daily informal observations to build up a complete picture of each child on entry. The assessments are used to inform planning, set targets and aid early identification of special needs.

Over the course of the year, all staff in the EYFS contribute to the ongoing assessment process, using a variety of formal and informal methods. The children are observed working independently on child-initiated tasks as well as teacher led focus tasks with a specific learning objective, both indoors and outdoors. Evidence is gathered in a wide range of ways such as children’s direct quotes and observation notes, annotated photographs, videos, children’s work in their Literacy or Numeracy book, phonics assessments, and daily reading records and recorded in an electronic or paper learning journal which captures each child’s learning and progress.

At the end of the year, the EYFS Profile (EYFSP) is completed and the judgements are reported to parents, the Trust and the Local Authority. This profile is based on the cumulative ongoing observations and assessments in the following areas:

• The Prime Areas of Learning: Communication and Language, Physical Development and Personal, Social and Emotional Development, and,
• The Specific Areas of Learning: Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding of the World and Expressive Arts and Design.
• Characteristics of Effective Learning: Playing and Exploring, Active Learning and Creating and Thinking Critically. Each child’s developments and achievements are recorded in the EYFSP.

There are 17 Early Learning Goal (ELG) descriptors, together with a short narrative describing the child’s three Characteristics of Effective Learning.   For each ELG, a judgement is made as to whether a child is meeting the level of development expected at the end of Reception year.

To ensure that all judgements are accurate, valid and consistent, the judgements are moderated internally within the school, with other REAch2 schools and also as part of Local Authority moderation either as a local cluster or individual school.

Phonics Assessments

Schools are expected to closely track children’s phonics skills to ensure that phonics groups are fluid, enabling children to move from one group to another, matched to the development of their phonics skills. 

To ensure that there is consistency in the terminology we are using to assess phonics, we will be using the following terminology (in-line with national language):

Retrieval Practice

Research into cognitive science and long term memory tells us that learning is a change to long term memory and that if pupils are rushed through content, it limits their ability to store information in the long-term. Cognitive science also tell us that pupils must master the basics first and have lots of opportunities to recall information that has already been learnt. Our curriculum is planned on the importance of retrieval and embedding learning in the long-term. (Bjork and Bjork 2006) ‘The more effort there is in retrieving information, the greater the strengthening effect’

We aim to do this through:

• Sequencing lessons which build on prior knowledge
• Making links between different knowledge in other areas of the curriculum
• Interleaving concepts and knowledge
• Comparing and revisiting concepts, e.g. in history comparing a civilization they have just explored to one they have previously learnt about. Revisiting concepts aids ‘fluency’
• Developing ‘fluency’ of conceptual understanding and not just remembering facts (knowledge strength as opposed to storage)
• Recalling information that has already been learnt – this may be through low stakes quizzing, or beginning a lesson with a short review
• Spaced retrieval and ‘Overlearning’ – fluency and automaticity requires pupils to learn through repeated recall, this may be through retrieval practice during lessons and through spaced retrieval (after a few weeks, last term, last year).
• Formative and summative assessments, which help inform teaching and learning. Teachers can then re-teach and re-visit knowledge as part of the process of ‘mastery’.
• Interventions providing pre teaching using pervious learning and addressing re-teaching or re-visiting of concepts as necessary