Intake Primary School

IMPACT

In-school summative assessment

Assessment, at Intake, serves many purposes, but the main purpose of assessment in our school is to help teachers, parents and pupils plan their next steps in learning.

Effective in-school summative assessment enables:

• School leaders to monitor the performance of pupil cohorts, identify where interventions may be required, and work with teachers to ensure pupils are supported to achieve sufficient progress and attainment
• Teachers to evaluate learning at the end of a unit or period and the impact of their own teaching
• Pupils to understand how well they have learned and understood a topic or sequence of learning taught over a period of time. It should be used to provide feedback on how they can improve
• Parents to stay informed about the achievement, progress and wider outcomes of their child across a period

At Intake School, we use the outcomes of assessment to check and support our teaching standards and help us improve. Working with other schools, is crucial in this process, along with using external tests and assessments. We assess pupils against learning objectives and success criteria, which are short, discrete, qualitative and concrete descriptions of what a pupil is expected to learn, know and be able to do. This assessment criteria is derived from the school curriculum, which is composed of the National Curriculum.

The achievement of each pupil is assessed against all the relevant criteria three times per year, at the end of the: autumn, spring and summer terms, for Reading, Writing, Mathematics and SPaG and at the end of each learning sequence in Foundation Subjects. Within this, children are continually assessed against their age related expectation with: ‘at’ being the expected, ‘below’ being those children who have not met their age related and ‘above’ being the children who are working within their age related expectation at greater depth. Where a pupil is assessed as exceeding the relevant criteria in a subject for that year they will also be assessed against the criteria for Greater Depth standard.

An overview of assessments used are detailed below by subject:

In Maths:

• The Maths White Rose Maths ‘end of unit’ short assessments are used at the end of a unit to ensure that teachers have an understanding firstly, of how the children are doing with a particular concept and both the effectiveness of their teaching.
• NFER end of term assessments are used at the end of each term. These assessments allow teachers to make informed judgements along with a child’s end of unit tests, work within their book and along with discussions how a child has performed over the term and then this outcome will be recorded on SIMs.

In Reading:

• NFER standardised assessments are used at the end of each term in Years 1 (Spring & Summer only) and 3 to 5.
• Year 2, a combination of NFER tests and past SATs papers are used.
• Year 6 use a range of past SATs practise papers
• The aim of the above is provide teachers with the basis to form a judgement, along with work within a child’s English book and reading journal along with discussions how a child has performed over the term and then this outcome will be recorded on SIMs.

In writing:

 Independent writing tasks (Hot Writes) take place during each half term from years 2-6. These tasks, along with other pieces of independent writing, are used to make a judgement on a child’s writing outcome. This outcome will be recorded on SIMS termly.

Nationally standardised summative assessment

Nationally standardised summative assessment enables:

• School leaders to monitor the performance of pupil cohorts, identify where interventions may be required, and work with teachers to ensure pupils are supported to achieve sufficient progress and attainment
• Teachers to understand national expectations and assess their own performance in the broader national context
• Pupils and parents to understand how pupils are performing in comparison to pupils nationally.

At Intake, nationally standardised summative assessments include:

• Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) profile at the end of reception
• Phonics screening check in year 1
• Multiplication Tables Check in Year 4
• National Curriculum tests and teacher assessments at the end of Key Stage 1 (year 2) and Key Stage 2 (year 6)

Collecting and using data

At Intake, as well as providing information on outcomes, summative assessment is a vital tool in improving future learning. We focus on the following principles for evaluating and collecting data at Intake.

• We ensure that data collected is clear and focused on our school audience.
• The data collected is based upon work over time and this gives a more reliable measure of the effects of teaching and learning. The data collection surrounds being continually assessed against their age-related expectation.
• We understand the limitations of the data we collect and what we can infer from it to make improvements over time.
• At Intake, we acknowledge that we can never know what each child has learned exactly, nor can we know what our children are capable of at all times. Considering this, we strive to ensure that the data that we collect provides us with an accurate judgement of a child’s attainment against what is age related. We ensure that the data collected is based up on a range of evidence for each term.
• We ensure that the collection of data is proportionate.

Each term, for Reading, Writing, Maths and SPaG, teams work together to enter their judgements on to our SIMs assessment system to show a child’s current level of attainment (Point in Time Assessment, PITA).  Entering data on to SIMs, is incorporated into staff meeting time.

• We ensure that analysing data is central to the collection and improving future

teaching and learning. Once the data has been entered on to SIMs, analysis documents are produced for each team. This data analysis includes:

1. Points progress made for all groups of learners over the term, and since the end of the previous key stage end.
2. Where children are in relation to their age-related expectation across all groups of learners.

IMPLEMENTATION

Assessment approaches

At Intake School, we see assessment as an integral part of teaching and learning, and it is inextricably linked to our curriculum.

We use three broad overarching forms of assessment: day-to-day in-school formative assessment, in-school summative assessment and nationally standardised summative assessment.

In-school formative assessment

Effective in-school formative assessment (adaptive teaching) enables:

• Teachers to understand how pupils are performing on a continuing basis and to use this information to provide appropriate support or extension when adapting their teaching
• Pupils to measure their knowledge and understanding against learning objectives, and identify areas in which they need to improve
• Parents to gain a broad picture of where their child’s strengths and weaknesses lie, and what they need to do to improve

At Intake, we ensure that formative assessment is pivotal in each lesson and forms the basis for the next steps of learning which will be taking place. We adopt a wide range of formative assessment strategies and techniques in school. The main strategies are listed below:

• Marking and Feedback forms part of formative assessment and this is outlined in the

Marking and Feedback policy.

• Questioning is a main part of any classroom teaching and at Intake, we strive to ensure effective questioning is central to understanding, developing and consolidating new skills and concepts.
• Self-assessment and peer-assessment is used throughout.
• Learning objectives are always shared at the beginning of each lesson with the children to ensure that they know the expectation and the outcome that they should have secured.
• Verbal feedback along with marking also plays an important role and is often used to explain more complex steps or when reading teacher feedback becomes a barrier to a child accessing their own feedback.
• Children are always encouraged to recognise and evaluate their work against the lesson objective and success criteria.
• Teachers and children, reflect on performance and set targets for further development.
• On-going formative assessment and short end of sequence ‘quizzes’ , provides the evidence for the basis for making foundation subject assessment judgements.

Ongoing formative assessment ensures that; knowledge, skills and understanding are continually assessed and that the next steps of learning are supported and developed; that gaps are identified and interventions or sessions are put in place to address this and that misconceptions are quickly acknowledged and addressed.