Assessment at Somerville Primary School in Years 1 to 6

Progress and attainment system at Somerville In September 2014 the government removed the national levelling system that has been in place since the 1990s The levels for primary school went from 1c to 5a The expected attainment for the end of KS 1 was 2b and 4b for the end of KS2 This only gave a progress window of TWO levels through the whole of KS2

So what was the problem? The biggest challenge for teachers and leaders was that this narrow band of possible attainment meant that it was sometimes difficult to accurately show how well, or otherwise, a pupil was doing academically Also, a pupil attaining a L3 in Y2 for example looked like they were approaching Y6 levels already – this was simply misleading for parents and deeply frustrating to the profession

Where are we today? The government removed the whole national levelling system and asked all schools to develop their own ways to measure attainment and progress

So what does Somerville assessment system look like? The school is now using school pupil tracker online (SPTO) software to measure pupil attainment and progress. It has proved to be invaluable. To replace national levels SPTO has devised a system of ‘steps’ This performs the function of communicating progression and attainment in a simple format where the number represents the year group the pupil is currently in Each year of learning is then split into 3 ‘steps’

What are the steps? Each year of learning has been broken down into six steps: Towards (T) Working within (W) Secure (S) Each pupil will begin a year group as a ‘T’ and progress through the steps as the year evolves

Where should my child be ideally? This will obviously depend on the pupil’s ability and how hard they work! However, the expected standard at the end of each academic year will be ‘S’ – ‘secure’ BUT we will be tracking progress as well and each pupil will ideally make 3 ‘steps’ of progress from one year to the next So Bob who was ‘2S’ (in Year 2 and ‘secure’) at the end of Y2, should be ‘3S’ by the end of Y3 Obviously this is based on an ideal

What does each step actually mean? The three steps may be thought of in these terms; Towards – Pupil learning is chiefly focussed on the criteria for the band. There may be minimal elements of the previous band still to gain complete confidence in Working Within – Pupil learning is fully focussed on the criteria for the band. This is a teacher best fit decision but could be informed by statement assessments between around 40% and 70% achieved Secure – Confidence in all of the criteria for the band. There may be pupil learning still focussed on gaining thorough confidence in some minimal elements but the broad expectations for the band have been met

Year 1 Autumn 1 assessment So what should the age expected ideal attainment and progress look like? Year 1 Autumn 1 assessment End of Year 1 target End of Year 2 target End of Year 3 target End of Year 4 target End of Year 5 target End of Year 6 target 40-60s+ 1s 2s 3s 4s 5s 6s For a pupil to attain thorough coverage of the year band, children should reach the secure (or S) step by the end of the appropriate year We believe this makes reporting your child’s progress and attainment much clearer for you

‘hashtag’ So what’s the ‘hastag’ step all about? The advice from the Government is that pupils who have gained a secure understanding of the Y4 programme of study, for example, should not be automatically moved on to the next year’s programme Instead they should be provided with extension work to deepen and consolidate their understanding of the concepts and skills already grasped The new curriculum is already more challenging so this extension work will be covered by a small cohort of each year group

‘Secondary Ready’ expectation This year, Y6 will be taking the new, more challenging SATs tests in English and maths There will still be a national expected level of attainment for these pupils This level is to be called ‘Secondary Ready’ and is based around a scale score of 100 100 will be the expected attainment level