Assessment Overview

At Miriam Lord Primary School we view assessment as a very important tool for benchmarking the starting point of a child's education and to track progress and attainment.  Teachers use Arbor to carefully tracks objectives that pupils cover and to identify where any gaps in understanding may be. The system allows us to measure the depth of pupils' understanding and how they are able to transfer and apply the skills they have learned into new contexts.  We fully understand that this system is sometimes not easy to understand as a parent so please don't hesitate to contact school if you would like more information.  As always, we will provide an explanation of your child's progress throughout the year at our regular Parent Consultation Evenings.
 

How are children awarded a grade?

Miriam Lord have followed government guidelines and devised our own system to assess and measure pupils’ progress. These statements provide parents and teachers with information on how they achieve for their age. These include the following criteria:

• Working at 'below' level of attainment for his/her age group
• Is 'emerging' towards the standard for his/her age group
• Is 'developing'  towards the standard for his/her age group
• Is 'secure' at the age related standard
• Is 'exceeding' the age related standard

SATs results explained

Children will receive a scaled score. Their raw score – the actual number of marks they accrue – will be translated into a scaled score; this helps to allow for differences in the difficulty of the tests from year to year so that pupils' results can be compared accurately.

You will be told your child's raw score, scaled score and whether they have reached the national standard for that subject. The score that equates to the national standard has yet to be announced.

Children will also be matched against ‘performance descriptors’ (in other words what pupils are expected to know and be able to do at the time of testing) when being assessed by their teachers in non-SATs subjects at the end of Key Stage 1 and 2 to see if they’ve achieved the expected standard.

When will children be assessed?

Alongside continuous teacher assessments, there will still be national assessments at regular intervals in English primary education:

• Children will undergo a baseline test in Reception.
• The Phonics Screening Check in Year 1
• The Phonics Test in Year 2 (for pupils who did not pass in Year 1)
• The end-of-Key-Stage test in Year 2 (KS1 SATs)
• Multiplication test for pupils in Year 4
• The end-of-Key-Stage test in Year 6 (KS2 SATs)

What about children who are above or below the expected level?

Of course, there will still be children who will not meet the expected standard and they will continue to be teacher assessed using Small Steps (a way of measuring the progress of children who are working below the national curriculum levels). By assessing children more formally at Reception level, the government hopes the children requiring more teacher input will be identified earlier.