Key Principles for Assessment at Woodside Primary School

The principles that underpin our assessment system are:

• Every child can achieve: teachers at Woodside have the mindset: ‘What do I need to do next to enable a child in my class to achieve?’
• Learners will be assessed against Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for each subject
• Well-planned, teaching sequences across the curriculum will be carefully scaffolded drawing on the National Curriculum objectives, leading to assessment of the KPI’s
• Children will make age-appropriate progress; the focus will be on moving learners through each year group at the same rate to ensure learners leave each year group at age-related expectations

In order to be ‘secondary ready’, children need to meet statutory assessment judgements at the end of KS2. We use KPI’s to assess outcomes for children at the end of each curriculum year, for example:

A child that has achieved all the KPI’s set out for Year 3 for English would be said to be working at the expected level for English at the end of Year 3. A child achieving half of the mathematics KPI’s for Year 5 would be classed as working towards the age-related expectation for maths.

Our Assessment and Reporting System

• Ongoing assessment in lessons through mini-plenaries, carefully planned questioning and reasoning opportunities (including the use of learning reflection postcards and depth prompts) will be effectively used to ensure the correct scaffolding is built into lessons to ensure all children achieve
• Children will know what they are learning and, more importantly, why; they will become increasingly confident when discussing their learning (including their useful learning mistakes)
• There will be regular feedback, both written and verbal, between the teacher and learner based on the Inspire Partnership Feedback Toolkit
• A KPI document allows the teacher and learner to know what has been achieved and the child’s next learning steps
• Triangulation of data, evidence in books and pupil voice will be used to ascertain each individual child’s progress
• Children who have achieved all KPI’s for their year group will not move onto the next year groups curriculum, but instead will focus on deepening their learning and applying it in different contexts

Early Years - Nursery & Reception

Children in Nursery and Reception will continue to be assessed against the prime and specific areas of learning in the EYFS profile. Assessments will be based on observation of daily activities and events. At the end of Reception, for each Early Learning Goal teachers will judge whether a child is meeting the level of development expected at the end of the Reception year:

• Emerging - not yet reached the expected level of development
• Expected
• Exceeding - beyond the expected level of development for their age

Reporting to Parents

The summer term written report will explain whether or not a child has reached the age-related expectation and will detail the KPI’s achieved or needed to reach this point. It will state whether a child is:

• Working towards age related expectations
• At the expected level
• Exceeding the expected level