Assessment

At Abbott we have developed our own assessment procedures, in line with the National Curriculum and expected National Standards by the end of each Key Stage.

How are children assessed?

Three types of Assessments are used: Assessment For Learning, Formative, and Summative Assessments.

Each type of Assessment has a distinct nature:
• Assessment For Learning is any activity that is primarily designed to improve learning.
• Formative Assessment gives the teacher previously unknown information about students' achievements that are used to inform the next steps.
• Summative Assessment allows us to conclude students' attainment of agreed standards.

Each type of Assessment has distinct purposes: the purposes of Assessment For Learning are to help students to remember, apply facts to build knowledge, and develop reasoning. The purposes of Formative Assessment are to check what students remember and understand in the short to medium terms, to determine the efficacy of teaching methods, and to decide what to do in response to this information. Summative Assessment aims to check what students remember and understand in the long term and to decide whether this meets agreed standards.

Each type of Assessment has a distinct audience: the audiences for Assessment For Learning are teachers and their students. The audiences for Formative Assessment are teachers, students, subject leaders and parents. The audiences for Summative Assessment are teachers, students, subject leaders, school leaders, governors, parents and (where applicable) other schools and government departments.

The frequency of each type of Assessment is Assessment For Learning - every lesson, every day; Formative Assessment- from the mid-point of a topic onwards, with variable time scales; Summative Assessment - once or twice per year: years 2-6 will complete formal tests in Reading and Maths, during the Autumn and Summer term. This is used to inform ongoing teacher assessments.

At varying points of the year, we complete Teacher Assessments in all subjects, using our knowledge-led Planning, Progression and Assessment documents. Children are assessed against the relevant subject-specific year group objectives.

Pupil Feedback

Our Feedback policy ensures that children's work is assessed regularly and that they are then given the opportunity to improve or correct their work, or challenge themselves further, to ensure progression in all subjects.

National tests and assessments

Reception Baseline

The reception baseline assessment (RBA) is an assessment that must be administered in all primary, infant and first schools in England to pupils attending reception classes. It has been statutory since September 2021 and it forms the baseline for primary progress measures.

The assessment is short (the majority take less than 20 minutes to administer), interactive and practical, covering early mathematics, language, communication and literacy. Pupils use practical resources to complete the tasks and teachers record the results digitally on a separate tablet, laptop or computer. The assessment reflects familiar foundation-stage practice and encourages positive interaction between the teacher/teaching assistant and the pupil.

The assessment is inclusive and accessible to the vast majority of pupils as they join school in reception. Most pupils with special educational needs or disability (SEND), or English as an additional language (EAL), are able to take part in the assessment.

Pupils do not ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ the assessment; it provides a snapshot of where they are when they start school in the reception year. The results of the assessment will not be used by government to track or label individual pupils, or to judge the performance of early years settings. We will use the data from the assessment to show the progress pupils make from reception until the end of Key Stage 2 in Year 6.

Year 1 phonics screening check

The phonics screening check is an informal test that children will need to complete at the end of year 1. During the test, which is designed to test their ability to decode words using their phonics knowledge, children will be required to read a mixture of 40 real and nonsense words. To pass the phonics screening check, children will need to correctly decode 30-32 of the 40 words that they will be shown. This standard was set in 2013 and continues to be valid today.

The phonics screening check is an important part of children’s early phonics education. While it isn’t conducted under normal test conditions and won’t determine whether or not they progress into year 2, it’s a crucial assessment as it shows how well their reading and phonics skills are developing. If a child does not achieve the required passing grade during the phonics screening test, they will be given extra support over the course of the next school year to improve their abilities at reading and decoding words. At the end of year 2, they will then be able to retake the screening test.

Key stage 1

Following the Government’s response to the 2017 consultation on primary assessment, on 20 July 2022, DfE announced that assessments at the end of KS1 would become non-statutory from the academic year 2023 to 2024.

The reception baseline assessment (RBA) will replace the end of KS1 assessments as the baseline for cohort level primary progress measures. It became statutory in the academic year 2021 to 2022, and the reception cohort from that year reach the end of KS1 in the academic year 2023 to 2024.

The, now optional, assessments in English and Maths will be administered to identified children only, and be used as moderation tools to inform teacher assessment judgements, for all children. Test data will not be reported to any stakeholders.

Key stage 2

Key Stage 2 National SATs (Standardised Assessment Tests) will be taken in May, by all Year 6 children, who are able to access the curriculum.

The tests include: English Reading; English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling and Maths.

The aim of these tests is to measure their educational progress.
Each child will be given a scaled score, based on their performance in the tests (their actual marks on the test).
A scaled score allows for SATs results to be compared year on year.
This helps to take into account particularly difficult test years and other factors.
Children are expected to reach the National Standard, which is a scaled score of 100.

They will also be assessed by their teachers on subjects including speaking and listening, writing and science.

By using teacher assessment, we are able to judge a child’s performance in a subject over a longer period of time. This means that teachers are able to account for a child’s whole knowledge and ability in a subject, not just that which comes to the fore in a test environment.

Test results and teacher assessments are shared with parents. Overall school performance is published nationally.