ST JOSEPH’S CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL
Interim Assessment Statement during development of systems for the new National Curriculum
Mission Statement
As a Catholic School it is our mission to provide a safe, nurturing and happy environment in which to educate our children to share their witness through Christian values; to instil a love of learning, of self and of others; enabling all to develop their God given gifts and to achieve their potential.
Assessment in the New National Curriculum
Introduction
Assessment is an ongoing process which assists learning. To be effective it is essential to be clear about the purpose of assessment and to ensure that professional judgements are based on consistent interpretation of clear and shared criteria.
Schools, including St Joseph’s are in a period of transition between assessment systems. Since the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 children have been assessed against ‘levels’ with the expectation that by the end of year 6 children would achieve at least level 4. Those levels no longer exist. The new National Curriculum has specific objectives in each year group that children are expected to be understand and apply. By the end of year 6 children should be secure in their ability to apply these objectives and so be ‘secondary ready’. Children will not be tested against these new guidelines until the summer of 2016.
Assessment Guidelines
Formative Assessment Assessment for learning
As assessment is an ongoing process, it is important that it is a fundamental element of the planning process. Teachers continually observe, listen to and talk to children as part of the learning process. This enables teachers to make judgements about where the child is in their learning and to plan their next steps accordingly. This type of assessment takes account of pupils’ strengths as well as weaknesses and enables continuous reflection on what pupils know now and what they need to know next.
In English and Maths teachers monitor each child’s progress across the objectives of the new curriculum using a range of assessment tools and activities. A decision is made against each objective that has been taught to say if the child has experienced that objective but not yet shown a secure grasp of it; if he child has been taught, has a good understanding and can apply the objective; or if the child has mastered the objective showing full understanding and the ability to apply it in a range of contexts.
As the year progresses a picture develops showing how many of the key objectives a child has covered and understood. Using tracking software we can see where each child sits according to their Age Related Expectations at any point in the year. More importantly we can see which areas a child has been taught but not yet understood. This will then inform future planning for learning for that child.
Summative Assessment Assessment of learning
At certain points in a child’s journey through school assessments are made through more formal testing situations to find out how well, at that point, in time a child is attaining. These measures can be compared to local and national data from the same tests to see how individual children are achieving against their peers and also how that cohort of children together are performing against other cohorts of the same age.
Start of EYFS – A Baseline assessment is carried out in class during the child’s first weeks in Foundation Stage.
End of EYFS – Teachers assess whether children have achieved a ‘Good Level of Development’ by being at least at the expected level in all areas of the curriculum.
End of Year 1 - Year 1 Phonics Screening Test - % of children achieving the required score.
End of Key Stage 1 – from Summer 2016 children in year 2 will take tests in Reading, English Punctuation Grammar and Spelling, and Maths.
End of Year 3, 4 and 5 - We are currently researching the best way to get a summative measure of a child’s attainment through tests in these year groups. It is important that we can understand how a child’s test performance may differ from his or her ‘in class’ performance as at the end of the Key Stage it is the test performance which will be used to measure how much progress and what level of attainment each child has achieved.
End of Key Stage 2 – Children are formally assessed using SATs in Reading, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling and in Maths along with the Teacher’s Assessment of their writing attainment.
A full assessment policy will be agreed and implemented in association with partner schools from CAST once best practice of assessment for the new curriculum has been established.