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Assessment and Reporting
The importance of assessment
Valid and reliable assessment will inform teachers about how well pupils in their class have learnt a particular topic and whether any adaptations will be needed to their planning or curriculum design. Well designed assessment should allow pupils to show how well they have learnt the knowledge and skills taught. Pupils need to have learnt curriculum content sufficiently well in order to make progress.
What happens as a result of the assessment?
Assessment data will inform teachers and pupils about strengths in their understanding and gaps in their knowledge. This will allow both teacher and pupil to focus on areas for improvement.
Key terms
Formative assessments - Formative assessments have low stakes and usually carry no grade, which in some instances may discourage the students from doing the task or fully engaging with it. An example of a formative assessments might be asking students to draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic.
Summative assessments - The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an topic by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments often have high stakes and are treated by the students as the priority over formative assessments.
WAGOLL - This is an example of ‘What A Good One Looks Like’. Cumulative assessments Cumulative assessment refers to the practice of revisiting material from previous assessments on later assessments. Cumulative assessments are recommended because they:
• Ensure students revisit earlier material when studying for upcoming assessments.
• Have been shown to improve student performance (Lawrence, 2013, Khanna, 2013).
• Take advantage of the testing effect – the demonstration that repeated testing results in better learning than repeated studying.
• Are a form of retrieval practice – a learning approach that emphasizes recalling rather than encoding information.
How do I know if my child is making progress?
In all subjects:
ATL school: there is a strong correlation between pupils who have high Attitude to Learning and good performance in assessments. ATL School is on a rating scale of 1-4 to illustrate your son/daughter’s effort in lessons.
ATL home: ATL home is on a rating of 1-4 to illustrate your son/daughter’s effort in independent tasks away from the classroom, for example homework
In academic subjects, each report will have several indicators:
Percentage: The percentage your child achieved in the assessment
Unit Marks/Grade: The marks and grade achieved in each unit of the course
Average Unit Marks/Grade: The mark and grade at which your child is currently working