Ofsted and Performance Data

As a school, we no longer assess children using levels as the new National Curriculum  removed them and schools were given the task of designing their own assessment system. 

We view assessment as the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by pupils and their teachers to decide where pupils are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get them there. Much of what teachers and pupils do in classrooms can be described as assessment. That is, the tasks and questions used to prompt pupils to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of a concept forms the basis of what is planned for next. If children are to progress, then learning needs to be tailored to their specific needs and this can only be achieved through considering what they already know and what the next suitable learning intention is.

Within the classroom our day to day assessment reviews, considers and judges the progress of both individuals and groups. Our teachers observe learning, analyse the work children produce, interpret the evidence collected, give feedback to pupils and support pupils in thinking about their own work.

Assessment at our school is designed to be:

• Day to day (Formative)-teachers will make observations of children’s work, annotate planning, design questioning to probe children’s understanding, talk to children 1 to 1 in the form of learning conversations and mark work in line with the Feedback and Marking policy.
• Periodic (Summative)-teachers will use a variety of assessment tools in Year 1  to Year 6 to keep records of individual pupils’ achievements based on day to day evidence and record if children are working at, above or below their age expectation at the end of the academic year. 
• Each term class teachers meet with the Head Teacher to discuss their class in detail. In these meetings staff identify what children need to do next and any support that is needed. 
• Transitional-at the end of the year, teachers will update their assessments to indicate final attainment data and key skills achieved by their cohort. This data will be formed from the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile scores,  Year 2 and 6 tests and up to date records/next steps from Year 1 to 6. These results are also communicated to parents so that all parents know if their child is working at, above or below their age expectation in different areas of learning.

Overall, our view is that for effective learning to take place pupils need to understand what it is they are trying to achieve and want to achieve it. 

Please find below our most recent Ofsted reports and relevant information from the Department for Education Performance Tables.

Assessment

In 2016 the government introduced new national curriculum tests (commonly called SATs) to reflect the revised national curriculum launched in 2014. Test results are no longer reported as levels. Scaled scores are used instead to help calculate the new progress measures for schools.

What has changed?

The way the government measure primary school performance at the end of key stage 2 (KS2) has changed. Instead of measuring progress for individual pupils, the new measures look at progress at a school level. Progress measures provide parents with information to help them understand how their school is performing and to inform school choices. In order to calculate the school level progress measures, pupils’ results (at KS2) are compared to the achievements of other pupils across the country who had a similar starting point (prior attainment). Prior attainment is based on teacher assessment judgements at key stage 1 (KS1). Schools have progress measures published for 3 subjects: reading, writing and maths. There are 2 main advantages to the new progress measures:

· They are fairer to schools because we can compare pupils with similar starting points to each other

· They recognise the progress schools make with all their pupils, highlighting the schools whose pupils go furthest, whatever their starting point.

Early Years Foundation Stage GLD Results 2018

Key Stage 1 Results 2018

(KS1) Year 2 Results 2018

Key Stage 2 Results 2018

What Progress Measures Mean

Most schools will have progress scores between -5 and +5. If a school has a progress score of 0 this means that on average their pupils achieved similar results at the end of KS2 ( end of Year 6) to pupils in other schools with similar results at the end of KS1 ( end of Year 2).

If a school has a positive progress score it means that on average their pupils made more progress than pupils in other schools with similar results at the end of KS1.

A negative score doesn’t mean a school has failed or pupils have made no progress. It just means that on average their pupils have made less progress than pupils in other schools with similar results at the end of KS1.