Rationale

At St Richard’s CE Primary School, assessment means continually evaluating our children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, establishing what they can do and what their next steps in learning should be. Assessment is at the heart of our learning process. It provides us with valuable evidence to guide and improve teaching and learning. Alongside this it offers an opportunity for our children to demonstrate and review their own progress. It is an integral part of our Christian ethos of belief.

We are committed to:

• Using assessment day-to-day in the classroom to raise children’s achievements and their aspirations.
• Ensuring that children understand the intention of their learning, where they are in relation to this and how they can achieve it by closing the gap in their knowledge or skills.
• Providing children with clear, precise and easily comprehensible feedback, in verbal and written forms, that will support their learning. We expect children to engage with this feedback and to respond to it. The quality and value of teachers’ feedback will be evaluated by how great an impact it has on pupils’ progress.
• Involving our children in an ongoing self-improvement process and assisting them in understanding the importance of endurance.
• Our teachers adapting lesson plans and schemes of work in response to what children have learned or need to learn next.
• Using a range of evidence to establish a full picture of what a child can and can’t do e.g. observing, listening, questioning, discussing and reviewing work.
• Continually tracking the performance of children using Target Tracker and analysing the progress of each child in half-termly Pupil Progress Meetings, to ensure that children are suitably challenged or are provided with additional learning support.
• Giving reliable, meaningful and regular information to parents about how their child is achieving in a format that parents can understand and use to help their child at home. This is achieved through termly parent consultation meetings as well as a mid-year report and end of year report card.
• Avoiding any tendency to categorise children, but instead show an inclusive and Christian belief that all children are God’s children who can and will succeed.
• Tracking the attainment and progress of vulnerable groups, such as those who receive Pupil Premium or SEND pupils, half-termly to ensure the narrowing of gaps between them and their peers.
• The regular moderation of assessment judgements by professionals both within our school and from other schools within the LDBS Academies Trust.
• Assessment providing information that is of value and justifies the time our teachers spend on it.

Key Assessments

Early Years Foundation Stage

In Nursery and Reception, children are continually assessed through their play and activities by the Early Years team using the criteria from the Development Matters document based around seven areas:

• Communication and language
• Physical development
• Personal, social and emotional development
• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Understanding of the world
• Expressive Arts and Design

At the end of the Early Years, children are deemed to have achieved a Good Level of Development (GLD) if they have reached the ‘Expected ‘level in the areas of Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development, Communication and Language, Literacy and Mathematics. Children who have not achieved the expected level in these areas will be described as ‘Emerging’ and children who achieve above will be described as ‘Exceeding’.

Key Stage 1

Children in Key Stage 1 are required to participate in two national assessments:

• The Phonics Screening Check

Children will have their level of phonetic understanding checked by staff within the school by completing a short exercise of reading 40 words. This happens in June of Year 1. If a child does not pass the screening, they will take it again in the June of Year 2.

• End of Key Stage 1 SATS

Children will take tests in Mathematics, Reading and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling at the end of Year 2, throughout May. The results of these tests are used alongside the class teacher’s assessment to judge whether a child has met the ‘expected standard or is ‘working towards’ it. Some children who exceed the expected standard will be described as working at the ‘greater depth’ standard. These teacher assessments are reported to the Department for Education and published nationally.

Key Stage 2

Children in Year 6 are required to take national assessments to assess their readiness for secondary education. These formal SATs tests take place in June in Mathematics, Reading and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling. The raw score of each test is converted to a scaled score. If a child’s scaled score is above 100 then ‘national standard’ has been achieved. A score of over 110 is deemed to be high. These results are available for the school to view online in early July and published nationally by the Department for Education.

All outcomes of key assessments are shared with parents through the end of year report card. They are also published on the school’s website.