New assessment to support a new curriculum

The new Curriculum 2014 Implemented from Sept 2014 Some subjects saw major changes e.g. history, computing Other subjects saw little change in content but a change in expectation e.g. maths, English The bar was raised! The government/Department for Education (DfE) needed a new way of assessing the new national curriculum (Year 1 to 6. Important to note EYFS has not changed)

What was wrong with the old way? Levels on an incremental scale i.e. 2c, 2b, 2a, 3c, 3b, 3a, 4c, 4b…… Parents and children did not understand Did not give parents and children meaningful information Teachers, parents and children stopped thinking about what each level meant and what made up the level Teachers focussed on how much progress was made since the last test, term, year and not what needed to be done to achieve the next level Levels do not tell children what they need to do next Teachers rushed to get children up through the levels and this resulted in consolidation problems and gaps They do not have any immediate relation to age expectation

The new system Gives meaningful information to parents about where child is working at related to their age. There will be more use of words like “above”, “below”, “meeting” in relation to time More emphasis on ongoing teacher assessment and less on testing and measuring progress Informs teachers, parents and children what the next step is. Therefore it drives improvement “mastery” and “deepening” are new buzz words related to understanding i.e. children will spend more time consolidating before moving on

How it works Each year group has a set of objectives to be taught over the course of the year Children should have met all or nearly all of these to be working at the expectation for their age (remember the bar has been raised) There is some scope for children to exceed (but not much!) Some children will be working within the expectations of a lower year group Where the children are working at in relation to their age/year group will be reported to parents. Therefore it will have more chronological meaning The objectives not yet achieved form the child’s targets There will still be a formal (external) test in Yr 6 that measures progress since the Yr 2 formal assessment. At the moment these are known as SATs. Next year’s Rec intake will be the first cohort to be tracked Rec to Yr 6. They are going to do a “test” on entry to Rec!

Potential teething problems The more able and exceeding The balance between mastery and going over the same thing again and again At the moment there are no tests designed to assess the objectives 2014/15 is a year of transition and teachers are trying to operate two systems without being allowed to report levels to parents We have a new report format for Years 1,3,4,5 “given” to us. In time we will adapt it to suit Cranmere children and parents.

Thank you any questions?