Reporting and Assessment

Reporting

We report pupil progress to our parents in three parents' evenings per year, with one taking place each term. In the summer term, all parents are provided with an end of year report for their child, which details areas of strength and next steps.

Assessment

Summative and formative assessment

If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him [sic] accordingly." (Ausubel, 1968, p. vi)

When looking at assessment, there are 4 key areas that we need to consider:

• Purpose
• Validity
• Reliability
• Value

A successful assessment system will enable the teacher to understand thoroughly what is expected to be mastered by pupils at any given stage of education, and assess their progress towards doing so in a meaningful and fair way.

A key role of summative assessment is to provide the school with an overview and a method for: monitoring student progress; forecasting student performance or evaluating the effectiveness of teaching.

By using a summative, standardised test, it means that we have a way of interpreting the scores. These tests provide the school with the means for interpreting the data against national age related expectations and can be used to identify individuals or groups.

By having a form of standardisation and an agreed approach to testing, it will help to increase the reliability of assessments. The purpose of the assessment and how the data will be used are important roles for this standardisation.

Summative tests do not provide us with the more granular levels of information i.e how each individual child did in each specific topic.

The other form of assessment – ‘formative’ is used to support diagnosis or make decisions about individual student’s learning at a classroom level. Formative assessment provides teachers with information which will then allow them to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. These assessments are best when they are easy to implement and offer immediate results that leads to instant intervention or instructional adjustment.

This form of assessment can come in different forms and usually comprises of the following key aspects:

• Low-stakes assessment
• Goal of informing instruction
• Gain insight on learning status
• Helps identify knowledge retention and understanding
• Daily, weekly, or otherwise frequent checks
• Generally short and quick checks
• Comes in many forms:

Assessment Procedure and Expectations

Summative Assessment

• Assessment weeks will be in the academy calendar and will take place in the 2^nd last week of each term. There will be a baseline assessment carried out in the first week of September before then 3 other weeks – End of Term 1(Winter), End of term 2 (Spring) and End of term 3 (summer). 
• Reading tests to be administered in English groupings every 6/8 weeks
• Maths assessments to be administered in Year Groups, with children sitting one arithmetic and one reasoning paper
• Year 6 will be assessed on Reading, Writing, Maths and Spelling and Grammar at the end of each half term.
• Teachers will assess their pupils’ writing against an agreed set of standards for each year group. Moderation of writing will be carried out by writing lead.
• Turnham Academy will store and track data using a number of different programmes including Sims, FFT and our own tracking system.
• Individual teachers will have termly meetings with phase leaders/subject leads to discuss the progress of all children. These leaders will then report back to the rest of the leadership team.
• In wider curriculum, teachers will assess prior knowledge and skills at the start of the unit and then again at the end. This will form a baseline to see the progress and the attainment at the end point.  Any gaps can then be built into the next terms topic.

Formative Assessment

Turnham Academy has developed methods of formative assessment which work for their children and the context of the school. It is in line with our approach to learning.

• These procedures must be as consistent throughout the academy across the key curriculum areas. Regular learning walks will be measured again the milestones which include strategies for AFL. 
• Feedback at the point of learning is highly effective.
• Formative assessment must identify the gaps in children’s learning and inform the planning process, as well as phase meetings and parents’ evenings