Transcript Assessment without Levels - Holly Park Primary School

Assessment without Levels
2015
Some key dates…
• Education Reform Act established the framework for
the National Curriculum, 1988
• The National Curriculum was introduced into
primary schools, 1989
• The first run of Key Stage testing, 1991
• The Literacy Strategy was introduced in 1997
• The Numeracy strategy was introduced in 1999
September 2014
• New National Curriculum
• The National Curriculum levels have been
removed
• This year is the year of transition
The Year of Transition
This year, schools have been able to choose how
to track children’s progress and attainment using
existing levels or an alternative.
It is up to individual schools to decide what the
alternative to levels is.
Assessment without Levels
From September 2015, schools cannot
continue to use levels to track
children’s progress and attainment.
The levels were removed
because:
• They were too broad and not detailed enough
• They were not informative enough – they gave
a generic statement about a child rather than
give information about the learning
• APP relied on “best fit” which did not
necessarily mean that a child had a full grasp of
that level
• They conveyed the wrong idea of ability
The levels were removed
because:
APS levels showed no consistency of expected
progress over the curriculum.
E.g.
• KS1 & KS2 children’s progress expectations
are different.
• KS1 progress is a matter of opinion
4APS? Or 6APS?
The levels were removed
because:
They encouraged teaching and learning to race
through the levels going higher and higher. The
levels did not encourage or reward depth of
learning.
Opening the door to deeper
understanding
Tim Oates
Group Director of Assessment Research and
Development at Cambridge Assessment
Explains why levels were not so good
The new National
Curriculum delivers “fewer
things in greater depth”.
Nick Gibb, Education Minister
Depth & Mastery
• Before moving on, children should be able to
apply their learning in different and new
contexts – deepening their learning.
• Mastery – a child’s ability to apply their
learning
How much
I’ve learned
How much I
can apply
my learning
September 2015
• “Schools will be free to design their
approaches to assessment to support pupil
attainment and progression”
• New tests for Y2 and Y6
• Baseline for Reception (not yet compulsory
but we will use it)
• Y1 Phonics Check will continue
The Challenges for Holly Park
• What will we do to track children’s learning?
• How will we moderate with other schools if
we are all using different systems?
• The DfE tells us not to replace levels with
another system of levels with another name –
so what will we do?
What are we already doing?
• We are still using levels but beginning to move
away from them
• We have the new curriculum embedded with
our new Learning Journeys
• We are moderating with other schools
• We are moderating in school using end of year
expectations rather than levels
What are we already doing?
• We have attended courses about assessment
without levels e.g. Dame Alison Peacock from
The Wroxham School
• We have heard about what other schools are
doing
• Explore the possibility of using “Tracker
Points” on the Online Pupil Tracker that we
use
One option…
Emerging
Met
Exceeding
Mastery
But most importantly…
Teachers must fully embed
Assessment for Learning within
their daily teaching – tracking
needs to be something that
happens in the background.