TOWN FARM
Primary School
Section One
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Following the introduction of the National Curriculum framework September 2014, the government has removed level descriptors. The Department for Education has said that levels are not very good with respect to helping parents to understand how far their child is improving. In their place, from September 2014, “it will be for schools to decide how they assess pupils’ progress”.
With levels removed and the focus now on raising the achievement of every pupil, Town Farm have chosen a clear and comprehensive way to measure pupil attainment and progress.
Our assessment system
We welcomed the changes in the National Curriculum and saw it as an exciting opportunity to review our assessment and reporting systems to create a more holistic approach that makes sense to parents. We were very clear that whatever assessment tool we used, it needed to be robust and track pupils’progress across the school and not just at the end of a Key Stage.
All of the above will feed into 'Data snap-shots', these will take place at class, phase and subject level six times a year, towards the end of each half term.
At the end of a pupil’s time in Primary School they need to be ‘secondary ready’ to meet the required end of Key Stage 2 expectations; this is broken down into key outcomes for each curriculum year. We use the National Curriculum objectives to assess outcomes for children at the end of each curriculum year – for example:
We are using our own School Information Management System (SIMs) data to track pupils' progress over time, against age-related expectations in each subject area. Broadly speaking an average pupil will progress through the emerging, developing and secure elements each term as set out below. So a child at a 3.1 or 3.2 in Autumn should be a 3.5 or 3.6 in the Summer.
Rather than moving straight onto the next year’s curriculum these children will work on ‘mastering’ their knowledge through the application of skills in different contexts – they will be deepening their learning . The depth and application of a child’s learning is an important marker of their achievement and progress.
Children in Nursery and Reception will continue to be assessed against the Prime and Specific areas of Learning in the EYFS profile.
Assessments will be based on observation of daily activities and events. At the end of Reception for each Early Learning Goal, teachers will judge whether a child is meeting the level of development expected at the end of the Reception year:
•Emerging, not yet reached the expected level of development for their age.
•Expected, working at the expected level of development for their age.
•Exceeding, beyond the expected level of development for their age.
Through parents meetings and written reports we will continue to report the key areas of:
Academic Attainment |
Progress |
Attendance |
Behaviour for learning |
This will be in the form of the child’s attainment in relation to the age related expectation and if they are: below, emerging, developing, secure or exceeding. Eg. 3.1 emerging (EYFS – Reception and Nursery will continue to report emerging, expected, exceeding) |
This will simply be: slow, expected, good or outstanding |
this will be a % figure related to the school target of 96%: low, expected, good or outstanding |
This will simply be: poor, improving, acceptable, good or outstanding |