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Fawbert & Barnard's Primary School

Learning for Life

Assessment

Feedback
Feedback is highly valued at Fawbert & Barnard’s; it enables children to celebrate successes and supports the identification of next steps in order to improve.  This can be achieved through verbal feedback and written feedback by teachers, teaching assistants and pupils.

Keeping parents informed
Parents are welcome to speak to the Class Teacher about their child’s progress and are encouraged to support their child through homework activities, reading and helping in school.

We offer formal Parent/Teacher consultations in the autumn and spring terms where a child’s progress can be discussed with the class teacher and individual pupil targets shared.

We also prepare and send home detailed end of year reports in the summer term, which provide information on the achievements and progress of a child, as well as the areas that s/he needs to develop and work towards.

Why do we assess? 
Our assessment provides valuable information to help children, teachers, parents and school leaders to acknowledge, analyse and review achievements and progress in learning against expected standards. Our assessments inform our immediate and long term planning. Our assessment gives: 

* Children an understanding of where they are secure, what it is they need to do to address any gaps in their learning and the next steps needed to extend learning 

* Teachers – the detailed knowledge of their children’s achievements which they can use to inform future learning, planning and their teaching 

* Parents and carers – regular reports on their child’s progress in meeting expectations and ensures that teachers, children and parents can work together to secure learning and raise standards for all children 

* School leaders and governors – information that they can analyse and use to make decisions about future actions to improve standards, learning and teaching in the school 

* Receiving schools – pupil information to support transition between schools 

* External agencies and partners - (such as Local Authority, DfE and Ofsted) the evidence that a school knows its children well and sets and maintains high standards in learning and teaching as part of the school’s public accountability for its children’s future. 

What are schools statutorily required to assess? 
Teachers carry out day to day assessments and checks on children’s understanding and progress as part of their day to day teaching. Statutory, formal assessment procedures and tests also exist to measure attainment against national standards. Our children’s achievements are compared nationally with all those children of the same age and against schools in the local authority and in England. 

These formal assessments include: 

Early Years Foundation Stage assessment 
A baseline assessment is carried out when the children start school. We then monitor how well the children are achieving against Early Years expectations. This helps to identify those achieving a Good Level of Development and those requiring additional support. 

Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 1 
This assesses children’s segmenting and blending phonic skills as part of early reading. 

End of Key Stage 1 
The End of KS1 Teacher Assessment Framework will be used by teachers to assess whether children are working at, towards or at a greater depth within the expected national standard in Reading, Writing, Maths and Science. Reading and Maths national KS1 tests are also carried out in May to support this teacher assessment. Any children who did not meet the required Phonics standard in Y1 take the check again at the end of Y2.

Multiplication Tables Check

This is a new government check which will come into force in the summer of 2020. It will be completed and marked online. Each of the 25 questions needs to be answered in under 6 seconds. The results are not published but will be shared with pupils and their parents/carers.

End of Key Stage 2 
The End of KS2 Teacher Assessment Framework will be used to teacher assess whether children are working at, towards or at a greater depth within the expected national standard in Reading, Writing, Maths and Science. Children take the national statutory tests that assess whether they’ve achieved national expectations, which are measured by a scaled score, where 100 equals average.

For further details see the school Assessment, Recording and Reporting policy.