Curriculum and Assessment

With Juniper’s coordinated suite of solutions, student progress is shown via Formative Assessment (assessment during the learning process) and/or Summative Assessment (point in time assessment focused on the outcome of the learning process). Pupils are assessed against Age Related Expectations for curriculum subjects and strands. Typically this is measured in bands – Below, Working At, or Working Above expectations.

Progress should be seen in pupils’ work – progress from the beginning to the end of a unit or from the start of September to the point in time. If schools use a lot of group work for foundation subjects, progress could be tracked individually through informal quizzes/assessment tasks a few weeks after teaching. Plan end-of-unit assessment questions for the key aspects of the unit of work.

Monitoring pupil progress has a number of important benefits. For one, it allows teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching and supports and informs lesson planning for teachers where gaps in learning are identified.

A pupil progress tracker also ensures that all pupils achieve progress regardless of their ability and ensures teachers, senior leaders and governors can see that progress (or allocate funding for targeted groups). It can also highlight opportunities for improvement/pupils at risk of underachieving so that interventions can take place before they fall further behind.

It’s important to avoid the trap of collecting data for the sake of it, just because you feel that you should. Any practice in school needs to have a definable positive impact on the learners. The most useful data is that which can be used multiple times – reporting and tracking, as well as teaching and learning.

Pupil progress and attainment may be measured in several ways and expressed in even more. Statutory assessments include descriptions of the learning that is required to achieve a pass grade. This is further described through curriculum content for each year group. An understanding of where a pupil is within that content is the best measure of attainment. Commonly expressed as ‘Just At’ or ‘Securely At’ the expected standard for that point in time.

Whichever tracker schools use, they need to decide how they are going to determine a pupil has achieved a particular standard – some schools say that specific statements have to be achieved to be ‘securely at’ for example, others will say, for example, 80% of the statements for the year, others will identify the objectives which are key for further learning and say that these objectives are non-negotiable.

It is also important for teachers within a school to agree on what ‘greater depth’ looks like in non-statutory year groups. Some pupils are very securely ‘at’ within all the objectives, but that doesn’t mean they have the deeper understanding to achieve ‘greater depth’.

Some schools have written their own assessment criteria for each subject (some have then developed this further by adding descriptors for pupils who are working below the age-related expectation or above). So it all depends on your school and its systems.

To evaluate curricular effectiveness, start by identifying and describing the curriculum and its objectives and then check its contents for accuracy, comprehensiveness, depth, timeliness, depth and quality.
When it comes to curriculum intent, start by considering the aims and objectives of each curriculum against that of the national curriculum – does the school curriculum reflect these aims and cover the objectives listed?

If it does, then any assessment system should reflect the most important parts of the school curriculum for any curriculum area. Therefore, when planning the curriculum, it is best to plan assessment points where teachers can assess whether pupils ‘know more and remember more’ (Ofsted).