With the new curriculum brought into United Kingdom schools from September 2014, the Department of Education decided to remove the system of ‘levels’ used to report children’s attainment and progress. It was described as difficult for parents to understand and encouraged teachers to focus on a pupil’s level banding, rather than consider more broadly what the pupil can actually do.
The new programmes of study set out what should be taught by the end of each key stage. This gives schools the freedom to develop a curriculum which is relevant to the pupils and enables them to meet these expectations.
Schools have been able to introduce their own approaches to formative assessment, to support pupil attainment and progression. The assessment framework should be built into the school curriculum, so that schools can check what pupils have learned and whether they are on track to meet expectations at the end of each year group and key stage.
Isleham Church of England Primary School uses an online tracking system called Target Tracker to track pupil progress from Years 1 to 6. It is a way of assessing the progress of each child and setting targets for improvement in order to help each child achieve the end of year expectations for each subject.
The aims are to:
- Raise standards for all
- Motivate and involve children in their learning
- Inform parents and involve parents, so they can help their child’s learning and understand the progress their child is making in relation to the year group expectations.
Each child is assessed half termly against age expected standards for each subject. This summative assessment will be expressed as, below, achieving or exceeding expectations against the age related expectations for each year group, and reported to parents in this way at parents' evenings and in the end-of-year report.
The school also supports children to complete the end of key stage statutory assessments in May in Year 2 and Year 4, the EYFS profile at the end of Reception class and the Phonics test in June in Year 1. All of these assessments provide a guide as to how children are performing in relation to national expectations.
We are proud of our children's efforts in these tests, and their individual progress is reported to parents as well as the test outcomes. Please see the Performance Data summary page of our website for more details of the results achieved by pupils at Isleham C of E Primary School in these tests.