At Landywood Primary School, we use three broad overarching forms of assessment: Day to Day In-School Formative Assessment, In-School Summative Assessment and Nationally Standardised Summative Assessments.

Day-to-Day In-School Formative Assessment

Day to Day In-School Formative Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. Good quality formative assessment helps children to measure their own strengths and areas for development; it allows teachers to understand pupil performance on a continuing basis (enabling them to identify when pupils are struggling).

Using the school’s tracking systems, Phonics Tracker, Classroom Monitor the monitoring of daily lesson delivery and learning by the children is recorded. In this way, it supports teachers to provide appropriate support (corrective activities) or enrichment activities (to deepen understanding) as necessary and informs progress. It enables teachers to evaluate their own teaching of particular topics or concepts and to plan future lessons accordingly.  Strands of learning are considered across reading, writing and mathematics using recognised interpretations of the National Curriculum (NC).

Through Day-to Day In-School Formative Assessment, we:

• support children in measuring their knowledge and understanding against learning objectives, identifying where they need to target their efforts to improve
• ensure that problems are identified at the individual level and that every child will be appropriately supported to make progress and meet expectations
• record and report progress to parents providing them with a broad picture of where their child’s strengths and weaknesses lie and what they need to do to improve.

It is our intention that this will help reinforce the partnership between parents and schools in supporting children’s education

A range of formative assessments to aid the school’s tracking system are used including:

• making use of rich question and answers
• informal class based assessments e.g. spellings and times tables
• pupil progress meetings
• guided reading record
• marking of pupils' work (see Marking and Feedback policy for details)
• observational assessments
• frequent short re-cap quizzes
• scanning work for pupil attainment and development
• discussions with children
• pupil self-assessment e.g. traffic lighting, self-marking against agreed success criteria
• peer marking

Pupil Self-Assessment

Our pupils set their own targets for Maths and English three times a year in November, March and July.  These targets inform their future learning and are shared with parents to help support learning at home.  Children self-assess against these targets periodically. 

In-School Summative Assessment

In-school summative assessments are used to monitor and support children’s attainment. They provide children with information about how well they have learned and understood a topic, or course of work, taught over a period of time, providing feedback on how they can continue to improve. In-school summative assessments will also inform parents about achievement, progress and wider outcomes. Teachers will make use of in school summative assessments to evaluate both pupil learning at the end of an instructional unit or period (based on pupil-level outcomes) and the impact of their own teaching (based on class-level outcomes). Both these purposes will support teachers in planning for subsequent teaching and learning.

In-school summative assessments are also used at whole school level to monitor the performance of pupil cohorts by subject leaders and champions - to identify areas where interventions may be required and to work with teachers to ensure pupils are supported to achieve at least sufficient progress and expected attainment.

A range of in-school-summative assessments will be used including, for example

• end of year tests
• short end of topic tests

• home learning
• reviews for pupils with SEND requirements

Using termly ‘best fit’ assessment relating to the National Curriculum age related expectations (reported on Classroom Monitor for Reading, Writing and Maths) allow teachers to report to the Assessment Leader and Leadership Team the progress and attainment of their year, identifying strengths and weaknesses that may need attention.  This in turn is reported to the Governing Body termly as part of the curriculum and assessment sub-committee requirements identifying by group not individual. 

The summative assessments are used to provide an end of year annual report to parents outlining progress and attainment of children in relation to National Curriculum age related expectations with appropriate Teacher Assessment comments.

National standardised summative assessment

Nationally standardised assessments are used to provide information on how children are performing in comparison to children nationally for children in Reception Baseline, EYFS end of foundation profile assessments; phonic screening and internally marked Standardised Assessment Tests (SATs) in Year 2; externally marked SATs in Year 6 and Year 4 Times Table Tests.  All of these may be moderated by the Local Authority for accuracy and reliability ensuring the school’s judgements are sound. 

They provide parents within formation on how the school is performing in comparison to schools nationally and with schools of a similar makeup. Teachers will have a clear understanding of national expectations and assess their own performance in the broader national context.

Additionally, NTS Reading and NTS Maths and GPS tests are used in Years 1 – 6 to provide information on how children are performing in comparison to children nationally (Key Stage 2 SATS also provide comparative data for Year 6 pupils). These also support teacher assessments, informing teaching for the next teacher and providing summative and formative assessments. 

Nationally standardised summative assessment enables the school's Leadership Team to benchmark the school’s performance against other schools locally and nationally, and make judgements about the school’s effectiveness. The government and OFSTED will also make use of nationally standardised summative assessment to provide a starting point for Ofsted’s discussions, when making judgements about the school’s performance.

Procedures – Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

Ongoing Assessments

Throughout our Early Years setting, practitioners use the Development Matters and Early Learning Goals (ELGs) to inform planning for next steps and assessment judgements. On-going formative assessment is at the heart of effective early years practice with staff capturing a wide range of children’s learning and development outcomes. Staff make regular observations of what a child has achieved to help identify where they may be in their developmental pathway and the next steps to further develop the child’s learning. Staff use a range of techniques such as questioning in order to drive children’s learning on. Analysis of data is used to inform individual pupil targets and to plan appropriate support. It is also used to help identify whole class coverage of the Early Years curriculum and more general gaps in knowledge.

Additional to this, phonic and High Frequency Word assessments are also carried out in Reception using Phonics Tracker to further inform the planning of early reading and writing development.

Reception Baseline

The RBA is an age-appropriate assessment of early mathematics and literacy, communication and language. It is delivered in English and is administered within the first six weeks of a pupil starting reception. The assessment has two components, each consisting of practical tasks using physical resources. There is an online scoring system for the practitioner to use as the pupil engages with the tasks. The RBA will be used to create school-level progress measures for primary schools which will show the progress children make from reception to end of key stage 2.

EYFS Profile

In the final term of Reception the EYFS Profile is completed for each child. This provides parents, carers and practitioners with a well-rounded picture of a child’s knowledge, understanding and abilities, their progress against expected levels, and their readiness for Year 1. The profile reflects ongoing observation, records, discussions with parents and carers and adults working with the child. Each child’s level of development is assessed against the early learning goals (ELGs).

Practitioners must indicate whether pupils are:

• Meeting expected levels of development (Expected)

• Not yet reaching expected levels (Emerging)