Effective Use of Assessment

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Effective use of assessment

Education Scotland states: “Assessment is integral to the planning of learning and teaching. A variety of assessment approaches can be used to allow children and young people to demonstrate knowledge and understanding, skills, attributes and capabilities in different contexts across the curriculum.”

In Renfrewshire we use a range of key methods of assessment: Standardised Assessments, Periodic Assessment, High Quality Assessment and Ongoing Assessment. Staff should consider when planning assessments which best considers learners’ experiences and different types of achievements.

The following steps should be considered when assessing the progress of learners. These steps are not prescriptive and should be used alongside a deeper understanding of the learning, teaching and assessment (moderation) cycle

Step 1 Decide what to assess

Step 2 Plan for Assessment

Step 3 Identifying what children and young people can do; What their strengths are?

Step 4 Plan next steps

In order to ensure assessments and staff professional judgements are as accurate as possible, staff should undertake moderation activity with colleagues within their own establishment and beyond. This could include:

• Planning together using the CfE benchmarks – with colleagues at all stages to ensure progression

• Gathering evidence to compare judgement with others at a similar and across stages

• Opportunities to moderate across the curriculum – beyond Literacy & Numeracy. In secondaries, moderation should take place across subjects and departments e.g. Maths teachers moderating in Science and English teachers moderating with Social Subjects colleagues

As a result of moderation activity, all staff should feel more confident with each element of the Learning, Teaching and Assessment cycle.