Assessment

Assessment lies at the heart of the process of promoting children's learning. It has a clear purpose at St Michael’s for everyone involved with the children. It provides a framework within which educational objectives maybe set and children's progress expressed and monitored. At St Michael’s this is done in partnership with the children using achievement statements from Year 1 to Year 6.

Our Philosophy

Assessment is incorporated systematically into teaching strategies in order to diagnose any problems, chart progress and plan the next steps for learning. It assists the school in strengthening learning across the curriculum and ensures that teaching and the curriculum is relevant to the developmental stage of each child. Our assessment procedures are free from bias, stereotyping and generalisation in line with the Equality Act 2010.

The Principles of assessment are to:

• Improve the quality of teaching and learning
• Track and monitor progress and support Learning
• Indicate pupil attainment and ensure progress
• Recognise achievement, identify strengths
• Guide planning, teaching and curriculum development
• Engage pupils in their own learning, assessment and set targets
• Use assessment information and analysis to contribute to the process of school improvement 
• Inform parents and the wider community of pupil achievement (including LA and DFE)
• Provide information to ensure continuity when a pupil changes school or year group
• Comply with statutory requirements at KS2, Y1 Phonics screening and Early Years Foundation Stage, Early Years Baseline check, Year 4 Multiplication check
• Ensure that all stakeholders are informed about assessment

Assessment is an integrated part of our planning process at a variety of stages. It includes a range of strategies in line with multi intelligence practices and inquiry based learning. Assessing, tracking and monitoring of all children is an integral part of teaching. It ensures that individuals, groups and cohorts can be monitored, compared and the impact of teaching and learning measured. We use Compass to monitor and track progress of all the pupils in our school.

Foundation Stage

All children are assessed after the first half term, using Sonar and the Wellcomm Speech and Language Screening check.   Children in the Reception class all undertake the Baseline Screening check within the first 6 weeks of their entry into the school in the autumn term.  More information on the Baseline Screening can be found here. These results are used to inform planning, set targets and aid early identification of need. On-going assessment ensures the next steps in learning are appropriately planned to help children make progress. 

Feedback

We provide children with feedback to show that we value their work and to motivate them to make further progress. We mark to assess each child's progress, to identify problems and to help us to plan for future learning. Research shows that provision of a mark or level alone does not promote pupil progress. Sharing the criteria for assessment and setting targets for improvement ensure a greater degree of success. Marking has the greatest impact when it is done alongside the child. We aim to carry out the majority of our marking in class with children.

Target Setting

Class teachers in Year 1 to Year 6 use Sonar statements linked to the national curriculum to set targets for their children in Reading, Writing, Maths and Science. Please click here for the Sonar statements for each group. The statements are reviewed on a daily and weekly basis in order to plan the next series of learning for the children.

Moderation

We regularly moderate our judgements within our school and within our school's consortium quad group. We also take part in Local Authority moderation.