BET assessment points

BET assessments are conducted twice yearly for every student during their time with us. These cumulative assessments cover content studied so far in the key stage (KS3: Years 7 and 8; KS4: Year 9 onwards) and are created by Trust Subject Coordinators/Directors to be taken simultaneously across all BET schools.

The purpose of these assessments is to:

• As a year group, take moments in the year to reflect on and evaluate learning to date, informing plans for future teaching and learning.

• Introduce students to effective revision techniques and strategies early, helping them develop skills for success in external examinations.

• Utilise retrieval to support students establishment of long term memories for skills and knowledge within their subjects

• Build exam stamina in preparation for GCSEs by the end of Year 11.

While these are significant checkpoints, they are not the only way we assess progress. Learning is continually assessed through classroom activities, including smaller quizzes, retrieval practice, and teacher questioning. BET assessments offer students a chance to demonstrate their cumulative knowledge independently under standardized conditions. 

These assessment points always happen over a fortnight and the timings for them can be seen on the whole school calendar (visible on our website) and below for your reference. 

Consistent at every assessment point will be

English, maths, science, geography, history, languages. 

Other subjects then have one assessment point every year with the exception of PE who do not hold BET assessments which is why their subject marksheet looks a little different and below you can see which additional subjects fall into which assessment period

BET 7.1: music/ RE/ art

BET 7.2: Mandarin/ computing/ drama/ DT

BET 8.1 Mandarin/ art

BET 8.2 Mandarin/ music/ computing/ RE/ drama/ DT

Before the assessments

We will share subject-specific revision lists and a timetable ahead of DEAR Week (“Drop Everything and Revise”), which takes place the week before BET assessments. Previous examples can be seen below for your reference and apart from the timetable, little is likely to change in terms of guidance given by Curriculum Leaders but we await information from Trust Subject Directors and Coordinators before sending these out. 

During DEAR Week, students will review key topics and learn subject-specific revision techniques in lessons. This preparation is designed to build confidence and familiarity with the process.

 You can help at home by:

• Encouraging your child to engage with homework and classwork provided by their teachers.

• Discussing their learning and any topics they find challenging potentially using the learning journey documents here or their Showbie classrooms to be able to hold these conversations regularly 

• Exploring effective study methods and resources together.

More information on how to support is found on this webpage here

After the Assessments

Following the BET assessment fortnight, our teachers will engage in moderation activities within school and across the Trust. This process ensures consistency and helps us refine our curriculum. Students will then participate in Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time (DIRT), during which they’ll receive feedback, reflect on their performance, and identify strategies for improvement as well as receiving their marked papers.

By completing assessments at the same time as other Trust schools, this allows us to both moderate together with other practitioners thereby sharing best practice, but also gauge the attainment of our learners by comparison to a larger cohort of students, like they would have in their national exams in year 11. This BET data enables us to provide you with feedback for your child that compares their attainment in the BET assessment to other students across all BET schools in the form of a grade 1-9 mark (or L1P - L2D* for VCERTs). In year 11 where full papers are sat, national grade boundaries are used to determine the allocated grades. 

The grades will then be shared with students in class as well as on Pupil Progress in the next reporting session. To help identify these on the report the coding "BET year. 1 or BET year .2" is used so for example BET 7.1 refers to the first BET assessment sat in year 7 and BET 7.2 to their second BET assessment. 

Further information on Pupil Progress can be found here

All BET assessments are cumulative and based on work completed within a key stage (KS3, year 7- year 8 or KS4, year 9- year 11) so any content can come up on the assessment and the Showbie classrooms will be good reminders of what has been learnt. 

However, we do also produce timetables and revision lists. These are collated once information has been received from Trust about the assessment and therefore will often be produced ready for DEAR week (the week before the BET assessment fortnight).  For your reference, we include previous year information packs below to help you start revising earlier and will update when new information comes through. You will receive this via classcharts so won't need to keep referring back to this page for updates