Assessment without Levels

2015

Some key dates…

• Education Reform Act established the framework for the National Curriculum, 1988

• The National Curriculum was introduced into primary schools, 1989

• The first run of Key Stage testing, 1991• The Literacy Strategy was introduced in

1997• The Numeracy strategy was introduced in

1999

September 2014

• New National Curriculum

• The National Curriculum levels have been removed

• This year is the year of transition

The Year of Transition

This year, schools have been able to choose how to track children’s progress and attainment using

existing levels or an alternative.

It is up to individual schools to decide what the alternative to levels is.

Assessment without Levels

From September 2015, schools cannot continue to use levels to track children’s progress

and attainment.

The levels were removed because:

• They were too broad and not detailed enough

• They were not informative enough – they gave a generic statement about a child rather than give information about the learning

• APP relied on “best fit” which did not necessarily mean that a child had a full grasp of that level

• They conveyed the wrong idea of ability

The levels were removed because:

APS levels showed no consistency of expected progress over the curriculum.E.g.•KS1 & KS2 children’s progress expectations are different.•KS1 progress is a matter of opinion 4APS? Or 6APS?

The levels were removed because:

They encouraged teaching and learning to race through the levels going higher and higher. The levels did not encourage or reward depth of learning.

Opening the door to deeper understanding

Tim OatesGroup Director of Assessment Research and

Development at Cambridge AssessmentExplains why levels were not so good

The new National Curriculum delivers “fewer things in greater depth”.

Nick Gibb, Education Minister

Depth & Mastery

• Before moving on, children should be able to apply their learning in different and new contexts – deepening their learning.

• Mastery – a child’s ability to apply their learning

September 2015

• “Schools will be free to design their approaches to assessment to support pupil attainment and progression”

• New tests for Y2 and Y6• Baseline for Reception (not yet compulsory

but we will use it)• Y1 Phonics Check will continue

The Challenges for Holly Park

• What will we do to track children’s learning?• How will we moderate with other schools if

we are all using different systems?• The DfE tells us not to replace levels with

another system of levels with another name – so what will we do?

What are we already doing?

• We are still using levels but beginning to move away from them

• We have the new curriculum embedded with our new Learning Journeys

• We are moderating with other schools• We are moderating in school using end

of year expectations rather than levels

What are we already doing?

• We have attended courses about assessment without levels e.g. Dame Alison Peacock from The Wroxham School

• We have heard about what other schools are doing

• Explore the possibility of using “Tracker Points” on the Online Pupil Tracker that we use

One option…

Emerging Met Exceeding Mastery

But most importantly…

Teachers must fully embed Assessment for Learning

within their daily teaching – tracking needs to be

something that happens in the background.