Assessment and Progression and Review
Assessment and Feedback
Our Assessment, Feedback and Reporting Policy has been reviewed so that are under-pinned by the overarching principles of progression, as outlined in the Welsh Government Progression Code. A link to our full policy will be available in due course.
Curriculum Driven Assessment: Our CFW documents demonstrate planned progression in learning, which include identified learning outcomes that will measure and report on stduent outcomes.
Aims
To promote a whole school approach to assessment; to ensure that both formative and summative methods of assessment are used in order to provide feedback to learners, promote learning and provide a basis for the delivery of effective teaching techniques. To ensure that appropriate use is made of data to set appropriately challenging but achievable targets for learners.
To ensure that all statutory reporting processes are complied with (Appendix 1)
Rationale
Assessment should play an integral part of the Hawarden High School Learning Cycle, helping learners to understand what they know or do not know and highlight in terms of skills what they can or cannot do. It is the means by which we know whether teaching has resulted in learning. Assessment should be evident in every lesson; effective assessment is key to high-quality teaching and learning generating better information, for better decisions, for better learning. Assessment is essential to inform teacher’s planning and interventions through:
Understanding the progress students are making in terms of their acquisition of both knowledge and skills in lessons.
Purpose and Aims
· To track progress, attainment and achievement of all pupils each lesson and across sequences of lessons and over the academic year.
· To be used to identify skill and knowledge deficits of individuals and whole teaching groups so impactful interventions can be made by the teacher.
· To check pupils understanding systematically and provide clear, direct feedback.
· To help plan learning opportunities that help students remember in the long term the content that has been taught
· To provide support for involvement of parents and carers in their child’s progress
· To provide a clear view of current progress for SLT, Governing Body, Curriculum leaders, Subject leaders and external agencies as required.
· To provide a system that can work alongside national data sets in order that internal data is valid and measurable.
Forms of Assessment
Assessment for Learning (Formative Assessment)
Assessment for learning is the ongoing day-to-day assessment that generates a range of qualitative information about learner progress, which is often not recorded. Assessment for learning takes place to gather information about a learner or group of learners, what they understand or do not understand and how future teaching will be adapted to account for this. This is planned for and will take place in nearly all lessons as part of the Hawarden High School Learning Cycle. Various methods of feedback will be given to students across the curriculum as a result of effective formative assessment
Each curriculum area should aim to implement the following AfL principles
· Learning objectives should be set at the start of each lesson to ensure that all pupils know their personal objectives within the lesson. Wherever possible pupils should be part of the process of setting the learning objectives.
· Assessment criteria should be shared with pupils before they complete tasks to allow them to identify what they need to do to improve in that task.
· Oral feedback, peer marking and self-marking should be used for assessment during a lesson.
· Pupils should be given sufficient time to formulate their answer(s) to questions asked in class before verbalising.
· The whole school feedback policy (Appendix 2) and department policy is to be followed when giving feedback to pupils.
· SiMS and Epraise should be used when registering pupils to praise achievement or raise concerns
Assessment of Learning / Attainment (Summative Assessment)
Assessment of learning measures attainment within a learning or subject area. It is used to draw some conclusions at the end of a significant period of time, or at the end of a unit of work and is usually recorded formally. Upon marking summative assessments teachers will typically offer whole class feedback and students will be asked to identify from this feedback their own areas of strength and areas for development.
Cumulative Summative Assessment Points will be set throughout the year according to the following cycle:
Years 7, 8 and 9 – 1 per term
Years 10 – 3 per year – including 1 end of year trial exam
Year 11 – 3 per year – including 2 trial exams
Year 12 – 3 per year – including 2 trial exams
Year 13 – 3 per year – including 2 trial exams
Teachers will mark and provide whole class feedback for each exam. Students will be expected to make changes and correct mistakes using purple pens and identify areas of strengths and areas for development based on their performance in the tests.