Reporting to parents and carers

Each academic year, there are two parents’ evening appointments for parents to meet with their child’s teacher and have a look at their work in school. At the spring term parents’ evening a mid-year report will be handed out and a final written report will be given to parents in the summer term. On these occasions parents are told whether their child is ‘below’, ‘developing’, ‘secure’ or ‘greater depth’ in their year group curriculum in relation to reading, writing and mathematics.

If a child is working significantly below the expectation for their age, it is likely that they will be assessed for special educational needs (SEN). This will also mean that parents can expect close dialogue with the school and report comments will reflect attainment and shouldn’t come as an unpleasant surprise in terms of Age Related Expectations.

Your child will also be issued with an annual written report from the class teacher that will detail the progress your child has made in all subjects. Any statutory results (phonics, SATs) will be included in this report.

Why do we assess?

We believe that effective assessment provides information to improve teaching and learning. We give children regular feedback on their learning (this is called Assessment for Learning – see below) so that they understand what it is that they need to do better. This allows us to base our lesson plans on a detailed knowledge of each child.

We assess children to:

• Ensure that all children make as much progress as possible.
• Help teachers to plan next steps for all children.
• Inform parents how well their child is doing in school.
• Give school governors data about school performance to hold school leaders to account. 

How do we assess?

At Droxford Junior School we assess how well children are doing in relation to Age Related Expectations (ARE). Children are assessed in every subject across the curriculum in line with the school’s ‘Assessment and Progression’ documents which focus on three key areas: Knowledge, Skills and Vocabulary. The Assessment and Progression documents set out objectives which children aim to meet by the end of that unit of work.

When your child starts in Year 3 there will be a number of baseline tests which are used to support Key Stage 1 assessments in enabling Droxford Junior School children to be supported and challenged in their new classes.

Key Stage 2 Assessment

Throughout the year children will sit two sets of formal assessments for reading and maths. These will take place in the Spring and Summer term and will provide us with a scaled score to see where children are in line with others in England. These are internal tests and marked by the teachers.

In Year 6 there is a combination of teacher assessment, tasks and statutory external tests to assess each child’s performance in: reading; writing; grammar, punctuation & spelling; mathematics and science. The SATs tests (for reading, writing, maths and spelling and grammar) are sat in May and marked externally. All pupils will receive a raw score that is converted to a scaled score. A score of 100 will always represent the ‘expected standard’.  Writing and science is teacher assessed.

Types of Assessment

Assessment for learning (formative assessment): Helps to identify the next steps needed to make progress. It takes account of pupils’ strengths and gaps in their learning. This is ongoing monitoring by the teacher on a daily basis to see how children learn and develop and is achieved through various means:

• Marking and feedback
• Talking to the children about their work
• Observing children learning
• Discussions with other staff

The outcome of this type of monitoring may change lessons, inform next steps when planning and direct extra assistance for children.

Teachers will use various methods to find gaps in children’s knowledge and understanding to be able to accurately plan and teach to plug the gaps and ensure continued progress.

Assessment of learning (summative assessment): is more associated with judgements based on grades with public accountability. These may include assessments sat in the Spring and Summer term and also the KS2 SATs tests.

The internal assessments are used alongside teacher assessments to provide a judgement at the end of each term. Teachers also consider a range of evidence in books and what they know about the child.

The outcome of this type of assessment will be the stage at which the child is performing, for example:

Within each year group expectation there are steps to describe how secure they are in relation to the objectives at that point in time. These are:

• Developing (working within their Year Group curriculum but needs to continue to work towards the targets in order to be secure by the end of the year)
• Secure (Secure with the objectives for their Year Group curriculum which have been taught so far)
• Greater Depth (have met the objectives for their Year Group curriculum so far and also more challenging objectives.)
• Below (not yet working within their Year Group curriculum. These children will have separate objectives set to close gaps.)

Teachers use this information to ensure they are setting work that meets the needs of the children.