Assessing pupils’ progress and attainment

Teachers are busy finalising their end-of-year assessment data for reading, writing and maths. They do this at the end of every term, but the end-of-year data is especially important. This is definitely true for Mrs Burke, Miss Rushbrooke and Mr Owen because this data is sent to the local authority, the Department for Education (DfE) and Ofsted.

The attainment levels teachers give your child are based on lots of on-going assessment (marking, asking questions in class etc) and occasional tests. A few weeks ago, children from Y2 to Y6 all did some tests. The end of Key Stage 2 SAT tests done by Y6 are most well-known – these must be sent away to be marked. End of Key Stage 1 tests are done by Y2 pupils. Miss Rushbrooke marks these and uses the test scores and her own teacher assessment to come up with a final level (the test score ‘informs’ the final teacher assessment).

‘Moderation’ is a way to check and compare assessments with other schools. This year, a representative from the local authority visited to oversee the assessment process carried out in Reception. This helps to identify strengths and areas where we can improve (we only received minor suggestions to improve already strong practice). It’s really helpful in that it allows Mrs Burke to discuss her own assessments of Reception children with another Early Years expert. Because we’re a single form entry school so teachers don’t have a ‘partner teacher’ in the same year group, this is useful as a way to ‘check’.

This year, we’ve bought in the services of someone to do this each term for Reception, so we knew Mrs Burke’s judgements were accurate.  We’ve also bought in the services of someone to do something similar for Y2 and Y6 writing, to make sure levels given for writing are accurate – they are!

Also to check or ‘moderate’, this year, governors have decided to use an external organisation to mark the reading, writing and maths of Y3, Y4 and Y5 pupils following their tests and writing tasks.  This will mean we can analyse how our children are doing compared with others nationally (which we already do with the Y2 and Y6 data), and we’ll even get reports on which questions our children did well and less well in – this might help us to work out areas where we can make our teaching even better.

The chart below indicates the minimum level range which is expected for a typical child by the end of the year.  However, please note that over half of our Year 6 pupils attain Level 5 or even Level 6 – much higher than these minimum expectations.

Children in Reception have their development described differently: their attainment will be indicated as ‘emerging’, ‘expected’ and ‘exceeding’ – ‘exceeding’ means they may be working at 1c or higher in the chart above.