Assessment and Expectations
At Barnabas Oley the children have consistently reached high standards by the end of their time at primary school. Children are assessed on a regular basis in school to ensure that content taught is retained, that new skills have been acquired and that children are able to demonstrate a deeper application of their knowledge across a range of different situations. Tables tests, Benchmarking , Half termly and Termly tests with SATs in the summer term help to provide an accurate picture of your child's attainment and the progress they have made over time.
Assessment Without Levels
Following the introduction of a new National Curriculum framework from September 2014, the government has also decided to remove level descriptors. The government’s policy of removing level descriptors from the National Curriculum is set out in terms of freeing schools from an imposed measure of pupil progress. The Department for Education has said that levels are not very good with respect to helping parents to understand how far their child is improving. In their place, from September 2014, “it will be for schools to decide how they assess pupils’ progress”.
With levels removed and the focus now on raising the achievement of every pupil, Barnabas Oley School governors, headteacher and teachers have chosen to measure pupil attainment and progress using a seven step scale.
The old and new curriculum have different content. Many of the objectives in the old curriculum have shifted to lower year groups in the new, more rigorous curriculum. This means it is not possible to have an exact correlation between a level that was the outcome of the old National Curriculum assessment and the requirements of the new National Curriculum. This means a shift in thinking and in the way we assess our children’s outcomes.
The school has welcomed the changes in the National Curriculum and saw it as an exciting opportunity to review our assessment and reporting systems to create a more holistic approach that makes sense to parents. We were very clear that whatever assessment tool we used, it needed to be robust and track pupils’ progress across the school and not just at the end of a Key Stage.
The principles that underpin our assessment system are:
- Every child can achieve:
- The National Curriculum objectives will be used as the expectations for all children.
- Children will make age appropriate progress – 12 months in 12 months.
- Teachers are experts at assessment - assessment will be effectively used to ensure the correct scaffolding is built into lessons to ensure all children achieve.
In order to be ‘secondary ready’ children need to meet the required end of Key Stage 2 expectations; this is broken down into key outcomes for each curriculum year. We use the National Curriculum objectives to assess outcomes for children at the end of each curriculum year – for example:
- A child that has achieved all the objectives set out for Year 3 for English (and no further) would be said to be working at the end of Year 3 expectation for English.
- A child achieving half or so of the mathematics objectives for Year 5 would be classed as working at the mid-Year 5 expectation for maths.
- A child achieving only a few reading objectives for Year 1 would be classed as working at the beginning of Year 1 expectation.
Our assessment and reporting system includes:
- Ongoing assessment by the class teacher throughout each lesson, through questioning, observation and dialogue.
- Children knowing what they are being asked to learn and more importantly, why.
- Success Criteria are discussed and agreed with or formulated by the children during each lesson, work is then assessed against the success criteria.
- Three way feedback, pupil, peer, teacher with clearly identified next steps – this can be written or verbal feedback.
- Regular pupils’ work scrutiny.
All of the above will feed into O-Track, our tracking software system. Assessments may take place at the end of a lesson, a module of study, half termly and during annual tests during the Summer term (SATs).
Tracking progress over time
We will use O-Track to track pupils' progress over time, against age-related expectations in each subject area:
Please see grid above to explain codes being used.
More able children
Rather than moving onto the next year’s curriculum these children will work on ‘mastering’ their knowledge through the application of skills in different contexts – they will be deepening their learning.
The depth and application of a child’s learning is an important marker of their achievement and progress.
Early Years - Reception
Children in Reception will continue to be assessed against the Prime and Specific areas of Learning in the EYFS profile.
Assessments will be based on observation of daily activities and events. At the end of Reception, for each Early Learning Goal, teachers will judge whether a child is meeting the level of development expected at the end of the Reception year:
- Emerging, not yet reached the expected level of development
- Expected
- Exceeding, beyond the expected level of development for their age
Progress will be tracked using O-Track system.
End of Year Expectations
The documents below provide information for parents and carers on the end of year expectations in reading, writing and maths, for pupils at Barnabas Oley. The National Curriculum outlines these expectations as being the minimum requirements your child must meet in order to ensure continued progress. Any queries, please talk to your child's teacher.
