AWL

(Assessment without Levels)

Mr Robinson

Deputy Headteacher

Aims of the session

The Government rationale behind the changes

The implications on Thornhill – increased expectations

The decisions we have made in order to embrace AWL

Understanding Thornhill’s approach to AWL

Reporting of your child’s progress and attainment

When the new national curriculum was published in 2014, new

forms of assessment were developed to align with its content and

principles. From September 2015, national curriculum levels are

no longer used for statutory assessments.

The changes to the National Curriculum and its assessment go well

beyond mere changes of content. They invoke very different day-

to-day approaches to assessment and signal fundamental shifts in

ideas about learning and assessment. The explicit requirement of

assessment is that it should be used diagnostically, on a daily basis,

to contribute to the early and accurate identification of the

support required in order to move a child on in their learning and

in their wider development.

New National Curriculum

Despite being intended only for use in statutory national assessments, too frequentlylevels also came to be used for in-school assessment between key stages in order tomonitor whether pupils were on track to achieve expected levels at the end of key stages.

This distorted the purpose of in-school assessment, particularly day-to-day formativeassessment. The Commission believes that this has had a profoundly negative impact onteaching.

Too often levels became viewed as thresholds and teaching became focused on gettingpupils across the next threshold instead of ensuring they were secure in the knowledgeand understanding defined in the programmes of study. Depth and breadth ofunderstanding were sometimes sacrificed in favour of pace. Levels also used a ‘best fit’model, which meant that a pupil could have serious gaps in their knowledge andunderstanding, but still be placed within the level. This meant it wasn’t always clearexactly which areas of the curriculum the child was secure in and where the gaps were.

Why the changes?

Single most important outcome that any primary school should strive to achieve is making sure as many of its pupils as possible are “secondary ready” by the time they leave.

• Previous expectations for primary schools (level 4 in English and mathematics) did not guarantee secondary readiness. In 2012, fewer than half the pupils who had only just reached the current expected standard in both of these subjects went on to achieve 5 A*-C GCSEs at 16, including English and mathematics.

• Therefore, expectations for pupils at every stage of key stage 1 and 2 have massively increased. The new programmes of study set out what pupils should be taught by the end of each key stage.

• We have to focus our teaching, assessment and reporting not on a set of opaque level descriptions, but on the essential knowledge that all pupils should learn.

• There is clear separation between ongoing, formative assessment (wholly owned by schools) and the statutory summative assessment which the government will prescribe to provide robust external accountability and national benchmarking.

• Ofsted will expect to see evidence of pupils’ progress, with inspections informed by the school’s chosen pupil tracking data.

- It is vital that progress is evidenced through high-quality outcomes in books- Consistency of application of skills is crucial- Breadth of knowledge must be clear with children achieving all of the statements - Teacher feedback needs to be even more specific than ever before to needs of child- Interventions must be timely to keep accelerating progress

Primary assessment and accountability under the new national curriculum, Department for Education, July 2013

The implications - Increased expectations

With the removal of national curriculum levels, schools had the freedom to choose their own approaches to formative and summative assessment, according to what best suits their pupils, curriculum and staff. This provided an opportunity for schools to challenge and improve their assessment systems and to build greater expertise in assessment.

The Commission’s purposes and principles of assessment have been developed as a starting point for schools developing or selecting their approach to assessment without levels.

Before designing or selecting an assessment method, we had to be clear:

• Why pupils are being assessed• The things which the assessment is intended to measure• What the assessment is intended to achieve• How the assessment information will be used

Creating a new system of assessment

iPAT (Islington Pupil Assessment Tracker)

Why iPAT?

• It is a tool that can record and acknowledge your child’s progress and attainment.

• iPAT can support your child and your child’s teacher to identify strengths and areas for

further improvement.

• iPAT can provide you with up-to-date information about your child’s academic

successes at key points throughout the school year.

After careful consideration, we decided to adopt iPAT, an Islington designed system of

assessing progress and attainment.

Your child will be graded against different skills (as defined in the national curriculum) as

Emerging, Developing, Secure, or Mastered.

These grades translate into a number of points based on the difficulty of the skill (see

appendix 1: iPat Maths Skills Statements). Pupils who are secure in all skills for each year

will be able to gain a maximum of 100 points by the end of the summer term.

Each year, these points are added to the previous year’s total. At the end of Year 1, a child

working at an age expected level would gain 100 points, 200 at the end of Year 2, 300 at the

end of Year 3 etc. So a child who has gained 25 points from Year 4 skills will add this to their

previous year’s points, making 325 points in total.

These points are then calculated back into overall subject grades of ‘Emerging’,

‘Developing’, and ‘Secure’ within their curriculum year band. 0-49 points = Emerging, 50-99

points = Developing, 100 points = Secure.

For example, a child who has gained 40 points would have a grade 1E (Curriculum Year 1,

Emerging), 300 points = 3S (Curriculum Year 3, Secure), 550 points = 6D (Curriculum Year 6,

Developing).

Emerging, Developing, Secure or Mastered

Assessing attainment - changes

Old system (National

Curriculum Levels)

New system (iPat)

Year (by the end of) Age-expected

1 1a

2 2b

3 2a

4 3b

5 3a

6 4b

Year (by the end of) Age-expected

1 1S 100 points

2 2S 200 points

3 3S 300 points

4 4S 400 points

5 5S 500 points

6 6S 600 points

As we aim for pupils to make 100 points each year. We predict that pupils will make the

following termly progress:

Summer to Autumn 40 points progress

Autumn to Spring 35 points progress

Spring to Summer 25 points progress

This means that we would expect a Year 1 pupil to have a total of 40 points at the end of

the Autumn term, 75 points at the end of the Spring term, and 100 points at the end of

the Summer term.

(This is in order for a child to end the year as ‘age-expected.’)

Monitoring progress

KS1 and KS2 SATs

From 2016, scaled scores will be used to report national curriculum test outcomes.

They help test results to be reported consistently from one year to the next. National curriculum tests are designed to be as similar as possible year on year, but slight differences in difficulty will occur between years.

Scaled scores maintain their meaning over time so that two pupils achieving the same scaled score on two different tests will have demonstrated the same attainment. For example, on the scale 100 will always represent the ‘national standard’. However, due to the small differences in difficulty between tests, the ‘raw score’ (i.e the total number of correct responses) that equates to 100 might be different each year.

The new national curriculum tests will be more demanding, with a higher and more ambitious expected standard. This will ensure that pupils who clear the bar are genuinely ready to succeed in secondary education. Department for Education, July 2013

Currently full information on what the scale will look like is unavailable to schools.

The government are waiting until pupils have taken the tests and the tests have been marked before they can set the national standard and the rest of the scale. The scale can’t be set in advance; this cohort is the first that has reached the end of key stage 2 having studied sufficient content from the new national curriculum. If they were to set the scale using data from pupils that had studied the old national curriculum, it would likely tom be incorrect.

We do know that the scale will have a lower end point below 100 and an upper end point above 100.

A pupil who achieves the national standard will have demonstrated sufficient knowledge in the areas assessed by the tests. This will mean that they are well placed to succeed in the next phase of their education. For children leaving year 2, they will be deemed ‘key stage 2 ready’ and children at the end of year 6, they will be deemed ‘secondary-ready.’

The National Standard

Reporting to Parents

When your child leaves Primary school, the current recommendations suggest that you should receive:

For example,

In the end of key stage 2 mathematics test, Tom received a scaled score of 87. He did not meet the secondary readiness standard (100). This places him in the bottom 10% of pupils nationally. The average scaled score for pupils with the same prior attainment was 92, so he has made less progress in mathematics than other pupils with a similar starting point.

Department for Education, July 2013

• A scaled score, which will show whether the pupil has met the expected standard and is secondary ready

• A ranking in the national cohort (by decile)• The rate of progress your child has made from a baseline.

Questions

Thank you for your time.