The planning of the curriculum and of assessment in each subject area is based on the principles of teaching mastery. Subject schemes of work are written and guided by establishing what excellence looks like and then planning to achieve this. Each subject area identifies the core knowledge and skills that students will need to master in order to successfully learn the curriculum. Through effective teaching we encourage all students to try and master their subjects and strive for excellence. Schemes of Learning must contain appropriate and timely summative assessments in order to inform the interim reporting points.
Baseline assessment
- This is usually the starting point for each student at the beginning of the key stage. It is created using a student’s key stage 2 SATs scores.
- At the start of each new unit of work teachers will gather information about student knowledge, skills and understanding in relation to that unit. This will be a baseline for that unit and will inform teacher judgements of how well they have progressed though that unit.
The curriculum is the model of progression. This means that students are assessed on how well they have learned the planned curriculum, and this is then reflected in their summative assessment results. At Fred Longworth our summative assessments have three common features:
Standard tasks in standard conditions
- In ‘Difficulty model’ subjects (e.g. Maths) questions on a test will get harder as you progress through the test.
- In ‘Quality model’ subjects (e.g. English and History) they assess using tests where judgements are based on the overall quality of the work. They use clear, specific descriptors/rubrics on which to base their judgements as well as standardised exemplars for teachers to compare their judgements to.
- Summative assessments will be standardised across the faculty.
- Summative assessments will be taken in standardised conditions when students have been taught the required level of curriculum content.
Sample a large domain of content and distinguish among students
- Summative test from that term, and previous terms/years. If they only focus on that term then they are not broad enough to provide reliable evidence about student progress in the chosen subject.
Infrequency
- Summative assessments are far enough apart for students to make meaningful improvements.
- Each faculty completes summative assessments approximately twice an academic year, although there may be more in year 11.
Summative assessments which are designed along these principles allow teachers, heads of subject, heads of faculty and senior leaders to judge, with some degree of accuracy, how well a curriculum has been learned.
In addition to internal summative assessments:
Nationally standardised summative assessments
- We make use of nationally standardised assessments such as CAT4, NGRT and other GL assessments.
- This provides invaluable evidence to help judge students compared to their peers nationally. These assessments usually take place in year 7 and year 9.
- This national benchmarking also allows core subjects to compare their planned curriculum to national standards.