Assessment Policy

School Development

Assessment: Its purpose

Overview

The Framework for Assessment at Shade Primary School

School Development

The policy reflects the vision and aims of the school. The vision adopted by the Governing Body incorporates the following statement:

'Shade Primary School will fully develop the potential of the pupils.'

The school aims provide pathways to the vision. The school aims are:
1. To ensure that every child feels a valued and cared-for member of the school community.
2. To create a positive and purposeful learning environment.
3. To encourage every child to develop a positive self-image, with a good attitude towards their learning and their behaviour.
4. To ensure that a balanced, broad curriculum is provided in order to raise standards.
5. To meet the learning and development needs of individual pupils.
6. To provide for the spiritual needs of pupils and to develop their moral awareness, making use of different cultural traditions and religions, in order to facilitate greater understanding.
7. To engage in an active partnership with all parents in order to promote the highest possible standards.
8. To encourage beneficial links between the school and the local community.

The Assessment policy seeks to incorporate the aims of the school in ways that help to achieve the agreed vision of future provision.

To fulfil the vision and achieve our aims, effective pupil assessment integrated within effective planning and recording schemes, must be implemented. The effective use of assessment has been shown to make a significant impact in raising the standards of overall attainment. Planning based on high quality formative assessment by teachers makes an important contribution to helping pupils improve their skills and knowledge.
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Assessment: Its purpose

Assessment primarily concerns:
Gathering information about each pupil's strengths and weaknesses, primarily from situations in which pupils apply their knowledge. The situations may include formal tests, informal tests, class discussions, problem-solving or investigations.

In considering the quality of the learning and teaching in a subject, OFSTED considers the extent to which teachers:
·Plan effectively and set clear objectives that pupils understand;
·Assess pupils work thoroughly and use assessments to help and encourage pupils to overcome difficulties.
(Inspecting Subjects 3 to 11, page 6, OFSTED, 2000).

Assessment needs to be carefully planned and managed. Assessment helps to develop an agreed understanding of standards and expectations about pupils' achievement across the school and hence promotes consistency in the judgements made by different teachers. A collective view on assessment provides support to teachers in making everyday judgements about pupils' overall attainment. Equally important, agreed policy and practice, which is explained to pupils and parents, helps to ensure that both these groups are able to understand and respond constructively to assessment feedback and advice.

It is our intention to implement an assessment regime that identifies the following forms of pupil information:
·Diagnostic; clarifying a pupil's strengths and weaknesses so that appropriate support and guidance can be provided.
·Formative; helping the teacher to plan the next learning steps for each pupil.
·Summative; recording the overall achievements of each pupil in a systematic way.
·Evaluative; using the pupil's responses to give the school information about its own effectiveness.

It is supported by the following activities:
·Use of constructive feedback which enables pupils to improve their learning strategies.
·Using the information gained from assessment, (whether at the start of a Unit of Work, at the end of a Unit of Work, or mid-way through), to plan taught activities.
·Meetings between teachers to assess, discuss and moderate pupil's work.
·Ensuring that systems for recording information meet teacher's planning and reporting needs and are easily understood.
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Overview

All assessment in our school should be purposeful, manageable and informative. Pupils need to be well informed about their strengths and weaknesses and, wherever practical, assessment procedures should involve the pupils themselves. As well as marking work, it is important that teachers spend time with pupils discussing progress, especially in core subjects. Talking to individuals, pairs or small groups of pupils each term, allows teachers and pupils to review progress and set goals. This approach motivates pupils to take an active role in their development by judging their own progress and recognising success and improvement over time.

Mathematics and Literacy
The emphasis in our teaching and learning strategies is on daily opportunities for oral and mental work in Mathematics, and text and sentence or word-level work in Literacy. This requires regular monitoring of related pupil skills, knowledge and abilities.

Informal tests of recall and mental calculation in Mathematics are an essential part of the assessment procedures that teachers should use to gather the information they need to plan oral and mental work. Text, sentence and word-level work in Literacy leads to opportunities to create individualised or creative work in the form of independent writing.

It is important that the assessment opportunities that are created by such activities build on earlier pupil successes and promote knowledge and skills that pupils have recently acquired. In Mathematics, there should be discussion of mistakes and of the different methods used by pupils to reach an answer. In Literacy, there should be discussion leading to evaluation of structure and appropriate word-use.

The 'plenary' approach is useful for teaching and assessment in both subjects. It also helps to reassure pupils who may be anxious about how their work is perceived. Guidance in subject and core documents is relevant. Reference should be made to:
The National Literacy Strategy: Framework for Teaching, page 5, DfEE, 1998;
The National Numeracy Strategy: Framework for Teaching, DfEE, 1999;
Science: A Scheme of Work for Key Stages 1 and 2, QCA, 1999;
Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, DfEE, 2000;
The National Curriculum Handbook for Primary Teachers in England, Key Stages 1 and 2, DfEE, 2000;
Inspecting Subjects 3 to 11, Guidance for Inspectors and Schools, OFSTED, 2000.

Tests
Statutory and optional tests, matched to the National Curriculum now include Years 2 to 6. These tests are used to provide the basis for tracking pupils' progress in Numeracy, and Literacy throughout Key Stage 2. The tests are designed to be fair and consistent over time and results will contribute toward monitoring progress towards school targets, using the Year Assessment Records.

National assessment information details pupil's strengths and weaknesses in answers to National Curriculum tests. These will be used as indicators for helping teachers plan for improvements in pupil skills and knowledge. These and school-based data, will be used to build a longitudinal perspective on pupil's performance in the core subjects. Other materials exemplifying standards of work, such as those published nationally by the QCA and locally by Calderdale LEA, will be used to develop teacher's assessment skills and a common understanding of attainment levels. Material exemplifying standards for pupils in each primary year is to be maintained by subject managers and these will be monitored by the assessment manager. Such guidance will be related to objectives in the 'Framework for Teaching' documents and outcomes in the QCA curriculum folders.

Teacher's Skills
Development of teacher's skills in assessment will be vital if best use is to be made of training materials and performance data. The assessment manager will evaluate performance in this area on a yearly basis. The effective training of teachers in assessment methods and interpretation of results is a requirement within the ICT National Curriculum.
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The Framework for Assessment at Shade Primary School

The following teaching and assessment model is implemented:

Planning content - Teaching through objectives - Checking and Assessing

Taking the main elements from the model, the following applies:

Content Activities
Content activities are all activities requiring assessment within the school curriculum. Assessed activities are planned and taught within Programmes of Study, (PoS). PoS are extracted from DfEE, QCA and OFSTED guidance. Activities are structured around aims or objectives for each lesson. A block of lessons makes a programme. Each programme is taught within a 4-6 week time-block. For planning purposes, this is called a Unit of Work. Medium-term planning is based on Units of Work.

Assessment
Assessment is required to check on pupil progress, to match pupil attainment to expectations and to provide relevant data for planning and teaching in the next Unit of Work. Individual pupils who are assessed at a level that indicates that they have not understood elements within a PoS are identified and follow-up action is used to improve their attainment.

Progress in relation to expected outcomes and progress in relation to Levels of Attainment, (LoA), are the key indicators revealed by assessment. From Year 1 to Year 6, a termly record of attainment data is kept on the Term Assessment Record. Nursery and Reception teachers record attainment in relation to criteria utilised in the 'Baseline Assessment Framework.' Initial indicative assessments are conducted in the Nursery and these are passed to Reception using the Record of Initial Assessments. Baseline assessments and End of Reception assessments are added in the Reception year.

Evaluation of pupil's work
Pupil progress will be evaluated at the end of a Unit of Work. The end of a Unit coincides with the end of each half-term. If required, the last week of each block of work is used for testing, comparing, moderating and recording. Formative data is the product of the process.

When evaluating pupils' work, teachers may implement the following:
·Consideration of contextual and situational factors;
·Comparison of presented work with level descriptors and exemplar portfolios;
·Review of informal notes that record progress on a 'per item' basis;
·Review of formal records. (Marks, grades, progress or attainment are recorded in each core subject as work is assessed.)

Planning
Planning incorporates an outline of programmed work and specific learning objectives from each PoS. Formative data generated from evaluation of previous work will be used to vary the programme of work for individual pupils.

Required routine assessment is identified in half-termly medium term planning. Additional assessment opportunities are identified as required by class teachers. Weekly short term planning lists specific activities considered necessary to accurately assess pupil progress. These may be formal or informal and may be based on listening, observation, scrutiny, discussion, questioning or participation.

Recording
To demonstrate links between pupil products and teacher assessments, Term Assessment Records are completed. To work within the above scheme the following is implemented:

Weekly: End of Item
A record of achievement is maintained through marked work and notes in short term planning.

Termly: End of Unit of Work
A record of achievement in relation to Key Objectives and expectations in the core subjects and ICT is maintained using the Term Assessment Records. These records are kept in each class teacher's assessment file.

Yearly: Summative
A summative yearly report is maintained that incorporates achievement in relation to level descriptors in the core subjects and some foundation subjects and which incorporates descriptions of behaviour, attendance and general attainment.

Other pupil records maintained by class teachers are listed in the Record Keeping Policy.

Monitoring
The assessment scheme is to be monitored by the assessment manager. Monitoring will particularly examine whether medium term objectives are matched to real outcomes. To facilitate this, teachers will be required to keep organised planning and assessment files. In general, subject manager monitoring takes place at the end of a Unit of Work. (However, core subject managers may wish to monitor the integration of assessment activities within the planning process at the start of a Unit of Work). The headteacher is to monitor implementation of the assessment scheme within the monitoring procedures that measure school progress in relation to strategic aims.

Evaluation, Review and Reporting
The assessment manager, special needs co-ordinator and core subject managers are to meet termly to evaluate procedures and outcomes. Core subject managers are to maintain a review of standards of work to establish and maintain portfolios. Portfolios incorporating standardised exemplar work are to serve as reference points for teachers making judgements on pupils' work during and at the end of a Key Stage.

Assessment data may be analysed by the leadership group so that it can be used to produce:
·Similar school comparisons using 'blended' data.
·Year-on year comparisons, tracking, trends and 'value-added' analyses.
·Pupil targets, class targets and school targets.
·School effectiveness and efficiency analyses.

Evaluation of assessment procedures may be made by the leadership group and may be used to consider:
·System effectiveness in relation to aims, progress and any applied success indicators.
·Changes or improvements required for the next audit or assessment cycle.
·Resourcing.

Organisation of Planning
Assessment contributes to effective school planning. Planning is carried out on three levels: long-term, medium-term and short-term.
Long-term planning incorporates Key Stage and year group planning. It is a broad framework of curricular provision for each year of each Key Stage, which reflects the school's aims, objectives and policies.
Medium-term planning is based on half-termly planning. It is produced by class teachers supported by subject managers. It is a detailed specification of each Unit of Work with clearly articulated objectives or aims.
Short-term planning is based on class teacher's weekly or daily plans. It consists of detailed lesson plans that ensure effective day-to-day teaching and assessment. Lesson plans include suitably differentiated pupil activities based on clear learning objectives.
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