1. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Moderation / Levelling

2. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Why Moderate Levels?  To improve teaching, learning and assessment  To engage in discussion  To develop a shared understanding  To achieve accuracy and consistency  To aid monitoring of the curriculum  To provide exemplification  To provide consistency of assessment to plan appropriate next steps  To further the development of partnerships between special and mainstream agencies using a common language  To enable staff to share expertise about teaching methods

3. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Considerations for Moderation  Who moderates?  What to moderate?  When to carry out moderation?  Use of neutral materials  Importance of annotation  Materials for exemplification?

4. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Levelling (making judgements)  When levelling a piece of evidence of attainment, the level only refers specifically to that evidence and not necessarily overall attainment of the child.  It is a good experience to attempt to level evidence that has been unclearly annotated. (A range of examples are provided that have been difficult to level and others that are more straightforward.)  It is not a precise judgement, but one that identifies a ‘best fit’ level. It may be likely that pupils demonstrate elements from across 2 or 3 levels. It is the one with a cluster of elements that represents the ‘best fit’ level.  When making judgements about the ‘overall attainment of a child’, judgements should be based on a range of evidence, and from discussion with others when possible.  It is important to understand the terminology used within the ‘P Scales’, particularly P1- P3. See handout 2.

5. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Understanding and Using Terminology For example -  Independently  Intentional actions + intentional communication  Coactively – substantial help from an adult  Proactively – child acts independently and with intentionality

6. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Levels / progression etc Activity  Levelling within NC levels  Levelling within P levels

7. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales The Process of Moderation  Teacher Assessment  Observation (not just teachers) is a key form of evidence when accompanied by annotation.  A range of evidence  Evidence can be an example of more than one strand  Examples should be representative of the pupil’s ability  ICT should be considered for collecting evidence e.g. recording language.  Evidence is best collected over time, in a range of contexts and in different forms What is the evidence to be collected?

8. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Annotations Good annotations alongside evidence are a crucial part of the process of making judgements within levelling and moderation.

9. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales  An assessment opportunityopportunity  Observation SchedulesSchedules  Completing a Moderation Proforma Proforma  A Completed ExampleExample

10. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Guidance:  Descriptions should be specific about the response to task not a list of level descriptors (see example )  A clear, brief description of task and response is necessary.  The description of what the pupil did can be on the evidence itself or on the covering sheet.  The description should say exactly what the adult and child did, including questions and answers around a piece of evidence, particularly those that demonstrate thought processes.  Avoid terminology such as ‘co-active’, ‘verbal support’, ‘with prompts’ etc.

11. Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Resources for Moderation  Evidence  Up to date P Scales  A group of people