2015, How we assess your child at Beech Hill including national changes
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, Fielding’s governors, leaders and teachers have chosen a new way to measure pupil attainment and progress.
Our new assessment system
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 new National Curriculum, this means a shift in thinking and in the way we assess out 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.
The principles that underpin our assessment system are:
- Every child can achieve: teachers at Beech Hill have the mindset, ‘Learning without Limits’
- 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. Below are links to the end of year expectation for year groups 1,2, 3and 4 and 5 and 6 for English, Maths and Science.
Parents Information Sheets
English – Year 1 – Year 2 – Year 3/4 – Year 5/6
Maths – Year 1 – Year 2 – Year 3 – Year 4 – Year 5 – Year 6
Science – Year 1 – Year 2 – Year 3 – Year 4 – Year 5 – Year 6
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 ‘Data snap-shots’ that will take place three times a year, towards the end of each term. This will feed into the overall attainment and progress for the school year.
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 – Nursery & Reception
Children in Nursery and 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
Reporting to Parents
We will continue to hold termly parents’ meetings where the child’s progress will be discussed and work samples will be shared.