[From a user’s point of view] Peter Olsen Using InCAS [From a user’s point of view] Peter Olsen

Why we opted for InCAS A set of useful assessments to support T&L An informative diagnostic tool to focus on individuals, classes and even the whole school Tracking An alternative to optional SATS papers USEFUL: Assesses reading, maths, attitudes and “capacity for learning”. Gives useful breakdown into relevant modules - reflects what has been learned - not what has been taught. Overnight feedback Realistic confidence margins reminding us that assessment scores show us how this child performed in this test at this time Diagnostic: Enables staff to look deeper into specific aspects of a child’s/groups work to pinpoint areas for development Charts show “confidence” whiskers to aid teacher’s understanding of child’s score Developed Ability and Attitudes assessments help draw the bigger picture Encourages conversation with colleagues/parents? - raises questions or even “alarm bells” Tracking: Highly visual feedback charts showing an individual’s progress and also provides confidence margins Alternative to SATS Much broader range of ability covered - 3/4 yr olds to 16+ yr olds [unlike KS2 L3-L5] Far less stressful for children of this age-range Far more informative - all-round!

Using InCAs for the first time... When to run the assessments? Installing the software Our system limitations Trickle-feed Uploading the data Collecting the feedback Using the feedback Conversations It had taken me the Autumn term to work through meetings with Senior Leadership, Governors Finance Committee and the whole staff to get everybody on board but everyone was keen to get it off the ground as soon as possible and so we opted for a January “trial-run” moving to September for future assessments Very standard stuff for an IT Technician - all up and running in afternoon 18 pc’s available [classes of 30] - split the class? Opted for open-ended investigation-style activities in the classroom for duration of test period [90 children = 4/5 half days Small group of 6 children then others sent for - created a very relaxed but focused atmosphere - no sense of time pressures and children slipped in and out of the room as necessary. Class teachers worked with rest of children in the classroom - HLTA and YrGp support staff ran the assessments in the suite Very quick and easy - we assessed & uploaded Yr3 & Yr6 in first week then Yr4 & Yr5 in following Children who had been absent were “swept up” afterwards - in the knowledge that the test was age-related New admissions could also be added into the system within days of settling into the school The website makes this incredibly easy and intuitive although the earlier version was not hard to follow First mistake - I downloaded everything - standard and custom - and passed it out to the teachers - absolute system overload - too much data to process - we learned our lesson and resolved to limit what was used in future - in the knowledge that there was more if we wanted it It was clear that we needed guidance on how to use the feedback so we arranged to have an INSET morning just before the next set of assessments were due to be run. Stephen Allbone came down from CEM and he worked with us looking at a first set of data - this set us up to make much better use of what we had and what came through in the next couple of weeks - brilliant All staff - teaching and support, along with school governors had taken part in the INSET so the staffroom was buzzing with past teachers as curious to know about children they had taught as the current teachers were - there was also the prospect of “who to look out for next year” There were blips and queries, but the great thing about the tests was that you could look at the confidence margins but also - because the data came back so quickly - you could recall how a particular child was on the day. Our SENCO loved the system - the feedback came back so quickly and was so useful for organising additional support for children with specific needs

Case Study 1 The Misplaced Mathematician Name: Callum Age: 7 years & 7 months KS1 Maths Score: 2c Placed by default into group 3 of 4 Maths Sets Symptoms: Fine in other lessons with same teacher but incommunicative and disinterested in Maths activities Solution: moved to group 1 We’ll call this young man Callum Always has a serious look on his face - although you can’t tell because his features are smudged to protect the innocent! KS1 Maths score = 2c We have four sets for maths - in this particular year group there were 42 L3’s out of 78 children Callum was put into the third set A few weeks into term his class teacher commented that she just couldn’t get him motivated to take part in her maths lessons although he was fine in other subjects. Mother has expressed concern - Callum says Maths is boring - won’t even attempt homework tasks We looked up his Y2 report - quiet, gentle - KS1 Maths score, etc What do his InCAS scores show? Which feeder school did he come from? Quick telephone call to previous teacher feedback confirms our concerns SAT score not a true reflection of ability moved into group 1 - total transformation!

Case Study 2 How high do our high-flyers fly? This is a Y5 group - 9-10 year olds - tested in January 2009 when we first signed up to the InCAS project Most of these children are already operating at level 5 - by the rules of KS2 SATS, they can achieve no higher and so, according to SATS they will make no further progress and these children will show no Value-Added between now and when they leave the school. In fact, many of them came in on a level 3 and, even leaving on a level 5, the school is unable to demonstrate any VA to their learning! Fortunately, the InCAS levels take us right up to Age 16< equivalency and so there is some scope to track their progress Of course, there will always be the child who goes off the InCAS scale but that child should already be on your gifted and talented register and, for most, you should still be able to find useful data in the modular breakdowns of their scores even at this remarkable level

Case Study 3 Using the Score Table - an example Here is a Y3 table showing Reading Modules ordered by Comprehension Scores The top names show a comprehension difference of between 3 & 4 years in advance of their actual age Clearly there are some very able children that we want to encourage and so we created 2 “invitation-only” reading clubs Maximum number was 6 children who met once a fortnight [alternate weeks to save the teacher’s sanity] Texts were read independently in their own time and then they met to discuss the relevant chapters with teacher focusing on higher-level questioning and encouraging children to express their opinions

Case Study 4 ... the other end of the spectrum This time the same list is ranked by decoding scores and we are looking at the bottom of the table By being able to quickly sort this information and then compare notes as teachers We were able to quickly arrange for a 5 minutes a day phonics group for these children from my class and 3 others from the other two parallel classes It was led by a very competent Teaching Assistant - and started their reading intervention very very quickly

Tables are not the only format... By the age of 7, this young man had spent his first 2 years in Surrey, then 3 years in France, then 3 years in Wales - Dad is an aircraft engineer for the Airbus. He is a lovely boy but his reading and writing skills were very poor when he arrived His reading scores very poor - and perhaps this was no surprise in the circumstances His written work, too, was often unintelligible but... It was very clear that he had “something” - very highly motivated, a great auditory and kinaesthetic learner, I wonder what the InCAS assessments had to say about him? Here is the scores table - hmm - generally quite poor - Developed ability is high - Picture Vocab in particular I don’t know about you but I find this quite a sterile medium - when I look at numbers I tend to see them as fixed and absolute so, as a visual learner here are some of the charts showing exactly the same data: attitudes - notice the difference in the confidence whiskers between his responses about reading and those about school Achievement - these whiskers are tighter but there is still about a year from best to worst - notice down here - this red line marks the lowest possible score you can achieve - definitely one for alarm bells. Maths was average and here is the breakdown - interesting to note the difference between number 1 - informal and number 2 - formal but look also at the confidence whiskers - quite long - partly due to the fewer number of questions asked on each module, I suspect Reading - generally much tighter whiskers than for maths but look at this decoding score - perhaps something to do with phonics? - he was put that 5 minutes a day group too. Developed Ability score is pretty high - is it balanced or skewed - let’s take a look Look at that Picture Vocab score Kyran went onto our possible dyslexics list and was quickly diagnosed as needing immediate intervention in order to help him overcome his reading problems.

Case Study 5 Even MA children have different needs Meet Phillip and Kylie and Sebastian and Arabella. Phillip: Quick, keen, competitive, all-rounder – sports as well as academics Reading seems a bit low – let’s take a look at the breakdown. A dip on the comprehension exercise has pulled him right down. I had a chat with his parents – “Does he read a lot?” – well, yes, but mostly “Horrid Henry – we can’t seem to get him to move on from there” – I gave them a more challenging booklist and he is Michael Morpurgo’s number 1 fan! And I expect that his comprehension scores will be higher next time around too. Kylie – shy, quiet, diligent. Reading Maths are the other way round – let’s take a look at those maths modules A bit weak on number 1 {I’ll have to look up what that includes] A bit weak of Measurement Shape & Space – make a note for when we get to those topics. Sebastian’s interests are: reading … and finding out about everything – He loves trips to new places, adores museums, built some bricks for James May’s lego house – I think you get the picture. … and why is his reading score so very high? A chat with Mum and it turns out that he was quite sickly when he was very young and learned to read at a very early age. And now he is older, he wants to learn everything about everything. That Maths looks okay but … he came in on a level 3 – any issues there? Hmm – no score at all for Number 1 – I did ask Brian Henderson about this and I’m pretty sure that it meant that his answers were too diverse for the software to come to a decision – there’s certainly some longer whiskers on the other areas – nerves, perhaps? I wasn’t too worried as he was due to join my Maths group anyway and it turns out that he is a very intelligent boy who has to work hard to understand mathematical concepts. And he does. Let’s take a look at Arabella: Like Sebastian and Kylie, she is stronger on the reading than the Maths And here’s what we need to keep an eye open for.

Case Study 6 The value of the bigger picture We’ll call this young man Gregory. Here’s his Reading score – bang on target for his age. Here’s his Maths – very much the same. Fairly short whiskers - showing pretty good levels of confidence. Now – here’s his Developed Ability – an underachiever perhaps? Take a look at the breakdown – non-verbal a bit weak – that’s about right for a six-year old – picture vocab very strong – that’s 4 years in advance of his age.. He was the first child on my list when I visited his infant school. Response from his previous teacher – “Oh those are surprising – tell me about these tests.” So I did – and she even had a go at one of the tests on my laptop – although, obviously, I didn’t upload her data! Within minutes she had an answer for me. In any assessment situation, this boy treats it like a race. He loves computers and would have shot through the assessments as fast as he could. That’s good for the Developed Ability tests as there is a strong time factor built into the scoring system – not so good for the other tests. I had a chat with the Teaching Assistant over-seeing the tests and she said – Oh, yes – he was in and out almost before I realised! … and another little note went down on our list of things to watch out for next year.

And Finally – tracking. This is really in its infancy as we’ve only used InCAS twice but I thought I’d show you a couple of our older children This young lady is doing very much as we might hope. Confidence whiskers for Developed Ability are quite long for both years Gen Maths & Reading are much tighter

It has to be remembered that we run InCAS quite early in the Autumn Term and, although there was a “handover” meeting tat the end of the summer when we chat with the next teacher the children are going to, most of us are still getting a feel for the actual individuals we are teaching from their contribution in class and their written work. This quiet young man came up with some scores that were a bit of a surprise to his new teacher - the class had several bright and forthright characters who had a tendency to “enthuse” whereas this one had kept his light firmly under a bushel - until the InCAS scores came back When I looked at his developed ability modules it was pretty clear that he hadn’t really understood the POPS task first time around and so his score jumped quite markedly Whiskers are all pretty tight although it is interesting to note that they’re a bit longer for the second Gen Maths assessment - maybe he wasn’t quite so focused as the first time around?

Thank you for listening.