In their Annual Report 2019/2020, Ofsted reaffirmed that ‘assessment is not an aim in itself, but is linked to the curriculum progression model’, and your school’s curriculum, based on the national curriculum, is your progression model.
It's essential that as a school, you decide how, when, why and what you will 'assess' or 'measure', taking into account the workload of your teachers, whilst ensuring you have accurate, clear and informative data to share with your stakeholders.
You should discuss in school what your aims are for assessment, and how your school wants to meaningfully integrate curriculum delivery and assessment for learning. We've produced a model assessment policy to help you set out your arrangements for the governance, management and evaluation of assessment in your school. Download a copy from the library.
If used correctly, Maestro can save teachers a lot of time by gathering information and evidence about pupils on a daily basis that will help inform ongoing and summative assessments. To enable this to happen, the Senior Leadership Team should have already completed the following steps:
· Read more about marking lessons as taught here.
Schools should be continually monitoring actual coverage, that informs teachers and leaders in real time as to where their children are and what is needed to support them to be the best that they can be. Each time a teacher uses the 'Taught' or 'Assess this lesson' button, the objectives that have been taught are added to the Actual coverage screen.
Actual coverage allows you to analyse and report on subject coverage and outcomes at an individual, class or whole school level. This gives teachers and senior leaders a live picture of how children are progressing through school and where the strengths and gaps are, to inform your action plans.
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To keep track of whether pupils are working towards the expected standard, you may choose to use the 'Simple' options in the Teacher assessment tool. At any time throughout the term, you can mark a pupil as 'On track' or 'Not on track' based on the objectives they have been taught and what they have achieved.
· Read more about Teacher assessment here.
All eligible children in maintained and specialist schools, academies and free schools are required to take the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 national curriculum tests. Cornerstones have created tests for all year groups from Year 1 to Year 6 that are designed in a similar way to the SATs papers to help prepare children for national testing.
These tests can be found in the Library on Maestro, and come with a range of tools to support gap analysis, and reporting. These scores can be added to the Teacher Assessment area to help teachers make an informed summative judgement at the end of each term.
Summative assessments should be done in line with your school Assessment policy. The Teacher Assessment page pulls together all the information that has been tracked throughout the year for each class and pupil to allow teachers to make an informed judgement at the end of each term and/or year.