Assessment

What are the school’s core aims for assessment?

At Croft Church of England Primary School we aim to:

• ensure personalised, formative, ongoing assessment is firmly at its heart
• be sensitive and constructive
• foster learners’ motivation
• promote understanding of learning goals and criteria
• be part of effective planning
• develop learners’ capacity for self-assessment
• help learners know how to improve
• recognise all educational achievement
• be central to classroom practice
• be a key professional skill for teachers
• focus on how students learn
• support parents understanding of how they can help their children to succeed

Assessment is integral to high quality teaching and learning. It helps us to ensure that our teaching is appropriate and that learners are making expected progress.

What are our key principles of assessment?

• Assessment serves many purposes, but the main purpose of assessment in our school is to help teachers, parents and pupils plan their next steps in learning.
• We also use the outcomes of assessment to check and support our teaching standards and help us improve.
• Through working with other schools and using external tests and assessments, we will compare our performance with that of other schools with a similar context .
• We assess pupils against assessment criteria, which are short, discrete, qualitative and concrete descriptions of what a pupil is expected to know and be able to do.
• Assessment criteria are derived from the school curriculum, which is composed of the National Curriculum and our own local design.
• Assessment criteria for periodic assessment are arranged into a hierarchy, setting out what children are normally expected to have mastered by the end of each year.
• The achievement of each pupil is assessed against all the relevant criteria at appropriate times of the school year.
• Where a pupil is assessed as exceeding the relevant criteria in a subject for that year they will also be assessed against the criteria in that subject for the next year. For those pupils meeting and exceeding the expected standards, we provide more challenging work.
• Assessment judgements are recorded and backed by a body of evidence created using observations, records of work and testing.
• Assessment judgements are moderated by colleagues in school and by colleagues in other schools to make sure our assessments are fair, reliable and valid.

 What are the key principles of our use of assessment?

•  Teachers use the outcomes of our assessments to summarise and analyse attainment and progress for their pupils and classes.
• Teachers use this data to plan the learning for every pupil to ensure they meet or exceed expectations. Teachers and leaders analyse the data across the school to ensure that pupils identified as vulnerable or at particular risk in this school are making appropriate progress and that all pupils are suitably stretched.
• The information from assessment is communicated to parents and pupils on a termly basis through a structured conversation. Parents and pupils receive rich, qualitative profiles of what has been achieved and indications of what they need to do next.
• We celebrate all achievements across a broad and balanced curriculum, including sport, art and performance, behaviour, social and emotional development and our core Christian Values.

Please see our Assessment Policy for full details including how your child will be assessed and how you will be kept informed of your child’s progress during the year.