Assessment

Baseline testing, on entry, and mid-year in year 7

On Entry: we will use the Key Stage 2 published data, supplemented by:

• The Analyse School Performance;
• Diagnostics for reading and comprehension;
• EAL proficiency levels.

There will be 2 calendared summative assessment points for each group where students will be tested for knowledge recall and the ability to apply it.  Assessments will be interleaved; approximately 75% of the assessment should be knowledge taught in the previous half-year, and 25% from previous periods.

Before each assessment, students will have a consolidation lesson to memorise key words/definitions/detail and focus on the questions they find most challenging, embedding the principles of metacognition.

Tracking System and Pupil level Data Handling

Within the Cranmer Education Trust tracking data from each cycle is monitored by subject/faculty leaders, senior leaders responsible for the quality of learning, standards and achievement and by the strategic group of academies headteachers, with the CEO and data analyst, to ensure that good practice can be shared, and underperformance addressed quickly. This includes monitoring of progress of key groups. Pupil data is always current; both current data and predictions in Years 11, 6 and 13 against targets, are reported to the Local Governing Committee and the Standards Committee of the Trust Board, in late Spring.

Moderation of GCSE assessment will take place in conjunction with Blue Coat School and other secondaries on the processing of joining the trust and will be externally checked by Specialist Leaders of Education (SLEs) to ensure accuracy.

Standards to be attained and achieved

School standards to be achieved at GCSE are set out in the KPIs, with the emphasis on progress for each student with the top 25% nationally (see target setting below).

Target Setting

Targets will be set for students using prior attainment data from Key Stage 2, plus DfE value-added models, to set an absolute minimum expectation for progress by the end of Year 11. Challenge is added by using Fischer Family Trust (FFT) Top 25% including student targets in each subject are based on national Key Stage 2 – Key Stage 4 transition matrices, again targeting the top 25% for progress.

No gaps in expectation will be built in on the grounds of gender, disadvantage, ethnicity, prior attainment banding or SEN. Targets for disadvantaged students will be equally as challenging as those for non-disadvantaged, so the size of the disadvantaged cohort is never a limiting factor on the aspirations of the school. Additional challenge is added to targets for the EAL cohort using the FFT analysis of contextual factors to reflect the acceleration that EAL learners typically make at national level (though not always at local level) throughout Key Stage 4.

Pupils are on a 5-year learning journey which will culminate in public examinations. This is divided into 2 distinct phases – Years 7-9 which is broad, deep and rich, and which lays the foundations of subject mastery, and Years 10-11 which remains broad through EBacc, and also offers opportunities for greater depth, some specialization and some branching out into new disciplines and courses linked to potential employment routes.

Assessment, Recording and Reporting to Parents

Formative and Summative Assessment Data. Formative data is based on teachers’ ongoing professional judgement of students’ progress in learning in the context of school and department assessment criteria. Summative data is based on testing conducted twice during the school year to check students’ knowledge, understanding and their ability to apply this.

Assessment styles are different depending upon the subject taught. In Maths, Science, Languages, Music, for example, knowledge and learning are cumulative. Progression involves building complexity and there is a ladder of difficulty.  In English, the Humanities, whilst there are more  difficult/complex topics, knowledge and learning are accumulative. Depth of understanding is shown by the ability to apply learning and concepts from one topic to another, to make links and to express these with increasing sophistication. Therefore assessment, in some subjects, will be characterised by questions increasing in difficulty.  In others, assessments need to be benchmarked against exemplars and directly compared.

The main driver for assessment is classroom-based formative assessment to test specific knowledge and understanding, strengthen retrieval and improve retention. This feeds back directly to the lesson pre-planning and departmental monitoring of students’ individual progress – which should prevent a failure to “graduate”.

The summative assessment at the end of Year 9 marks a graduation and will be marked as such. A failure to graduate in line with targets and expectations in a significant part of the curriculum will affect progression and will trigger interventions to rectify learning loss at the end of the summer term.

In Years 7-9, Curriculum knowledge is mapped by year and students are reported at 5 different levels; emerging – developing – expected – exceeding – mastery. 

This is reported to parents following department assessments and the end of year summative assessments. These will be followed up in different ways to help parents best support their children’s learning and development. The priority in Key Stage 3 is to ensure dialogue with parents/carers.

In Years 10-11 reporting will be based on GCSE grades and will be supplemented by more formal parents’ events and information evenings to prepare for public examinations