In late September, a randomly selected sample of Year 7 (as well as Year 4, 5 and 6) learners will participate in the ACER ISA assessments. The International Schools’ Assessment (ISA) is a high-quality assessment used by international schools and schools with an international focus to monitor learner performance over time and to confirm that the school's internal assessments are aligned with international expectations of performance.

The ISA supports Nexus to compare attainment in our Primary and Secondary School against other schools worldwide as part of our quality assurance processes. ACER has gained invaluable experience in developing assessments that are culturally and educationally appropriate for learners from many language and educational backgrounds. The ISA is based on the internationally endorsed frameworks for the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The ISA provides:

• an external evaluation of core skills in mathematical literacy and reading that allows us to evaluate the reliability of our internal assessments.

• a reliable external tool that helps us reflect and refine the quality of our Nexus curriculum.

• a detailed set of reports summarising our school’s results and comparative data that allow us to easily identify areas of strength or weakness and trends over time.

• comparisons of learner cohorts with other participating learner cohorts in the same year group. This provides a means for us to monitor cohort performance against international expectations.

If you would like to find out more about the ISA assessments, please contact Dr Heather Millington. If you do not want your child to be included in the random selection, please let us know by Monday 20th September. The ACER ISA Privacy Statement is available here.

We will share the main findings in January 2022 when the data is fully analysed against all the other schools taking part.