General Assessment Information
Standardised Testing of Pupils
The school will provide the most up-to-date and available information for parents/carers regarding your children's achievements and attainment in school through discussions with your child's teacher, open afternoons and formal meetings and consultations.
The school are also required to undertake statutory testing of children as detailed by the the government. The requirements and expectations are updated and changed to reflect the national priorities for education and learning.
The following statutory tests are completed and the data is shared with the Department for Education and the Local Authority:
Reception Baseline Assessment (ongoing assessment during term 1 in Reception)
Year 1 Phonics Test
Year 2 End of Key Stage 1 tests in English and Maths (new)
Year 6 End of Key Stage 2 tests in English and Maths (new)
By giving each child a baseline assessment when they first start primary school, schools will not only have a clearer idea of how much progress their pupils are making but should also help teachers identify which children are likely to need most help. “In primary schools we are raising the bar to improve standards,” says Schools Minister, David Laws, “and introducing a proper measure of progress from when children start school to age 11.” The government feels it will also recognise the good progress that schools make with children from a low starting point. Teachers have always completed their own baseline assessments on entry, however, this is now standardised for all schools.
The Phonics Screening Check is meant to show how well your child can use the phonics skills they’ve learned up to the end of Year 1, and to identify students who need extra phonics help. The Department for Education defines the checks as “short, light-touch assessments”. The checks consist of 40 words and non-words that your child will be asked to read one-on-one. Non-words (or nonsense words, or pseudo words) are a collection of letters that will follow phonics rules your child has been taught, but don’t mean anything – your child will need to read these with the correct sounds to show that they understand the phonics rules behind them. Children who do not meet the expected standard in year 1 will take the test the following year.
From Summer 2016, there will be more challenging tests (updated SATs) to reflect the new curriculum at the end of the key stages. These will no longer be marked with national curriculum levels but instead with a precise scaled score where a mark of 100 is the expected outcome. Children will also be matched against ‘performance descriptors’ (in other words what pupils are expected to know and be able to do at the time of testing) when being assessed by their teachers at the end of Key Stage 1 and 2 to see if they’ve achieved the expected standard.
This data is also transferred if your child moves school or on transition to Key Stage 3.