Hunsley Primary Assessment, Marking, Reporting and Feedback Policy. This policy is applicable to Hunsley Primary

Transcription

1 Hunsley Primary Assessment, Marking, Reporting and Feedback Policy This policy is applicable to Hunsley Primary

2 Important: This document can only be considered valid when viewed on the school website. If this document has been printed or saved to another location, you must check that the version number on your copy matches that of the document online. Name and Title of Author: Name of Responsible Committee/Individual: Lucy Hudson, Head of Hunsley Primary Board of Directors Implementation Date: Review Date: 1 September 2016 Target Audience: All Staff, Parents, Pupils, Community Users, Key Stakeholders Related Documents Hunsley Primary Behaviour for Learning Policy Hunsley Primary Child Protection Policy Hunsley Primary Attendance Policy Hunsley Primary Inclusion Policy Hunsley Primary SEND Policy Hunsley Primary Marking, Assessment and Feedback Policy Hunsley Primary Monitoring, Evaluation and Planning Policy References OFSTED guidance ( Education Act 2011 The Education (Independent Schools Standards) Regulations 2014

3 Assessment, Marking, Reporting and Feedback Policy Policy Contents Policy Statement 1. Purpose and Scope 2. Roles and Responsibilities 3. Equality and Diversity 4. Vision and Values 5. Definitions 6. Systems and procedures 7. Monitoring of compliance with and effectiveness of the policy 8. Review

4 Policy Statement This policy outlines the principles and values underpinning the expectations of the Hunsley Trust for Assessment, Marking, Reporting and Feedback at Hunsley Primary. 1. Purpose and Scope The Hunsley Trust and Hunsley Primary have a very clear understanding of how rigorous assessment, marking, reporting and feedback drive forward school improvement and ensure that all children achieve and parents are kept informed about their child s progress. We also recognise the importance of varying the types of feedback to acknowledge the range of ages, curriculum models, settings and pupil needs from Reception through to Year 6. How learning is assessed and how feedback is given will also determine interventions and next steps and will take into account the age and developmental stage of the children being assessed at all times. The purpose of this policy is to set down the school s intention to have an accurate, transparent and responsive assessment, marking, reporting and feedback policy that underpins teaching and learning; directs the planning of learning activities and interventions; ensures parents and carers are regularly and accurately informed about the progress of their child; supports teachers and classroom support staff in ensuring the very best possible personalised provision for each child and sets appropriately stretching and ambitious targets for each individual and ensures middle leaders, senior leaders, governors, executive leaders and directors are able to make accurate and effective judgements about the quality of teaching and learning across the school. This policy sets out the strategic plan for ongoing and relentless assessment and feedback which ensures continual improvement of children s understanding, knowledge and skills which will drive forward standards in school and ensure the very best outcomes for children. Hunsley Primary leaders (Directors, Local Governors and Trust and School Leaders) have identified the essential benefits of partnership working in ensuring the very highest standards of accurate and moderated assessment. The assessment and reporting processes ongoing in the school will be synchronised with the Monitoring, Evaluation, Intervention and Planning cycle, as outlined in the same policy document. This policy sets down the ways in which external sources of professional expertise will be employed, to ensure that our assessment of children s learning is always moderated and standardised by that of others with excellent knowledge of the phase and in comparably aspirational school settings with likeminded vision and values. 2. Roles and Responsibilities Teachers are the first point of responsibility for assessment, marking, feedback and reporting. Assessment is at the very foundations of planning and teaching on a daily basis. Teachers are also responsible for training pupils to respond to feedback and to offer peers effective peer-to-peer assessment and feedback. Teachers again are responsible for helping pupils to self-assess and set stretching goals.

5 School leaders are responsible for setting stretching targets for teaching staff to generate individual pupil targets for each class. Leaders are also responsible for ensuring appropriate levels of training and moderation deliver accurate and useful assessment data, to ensure children make best progress. School leaders are also responsible for monitoring the quality of teaching and learning via work scrutiny and pupil voice, ensuring that the marking and feedback ongoing in school meets the high expectations of the policy. Pupils are responsible for listening to feedback and, as they progress through the Key Stages, for responding to feedback and for engaging in in supportive and co-operative peer-to-peer feedback and shared assessment, offering critique of each other s work to ensure drafting leads to the best quality outcomes. Parents are responsible for offering feedback on reports sent home, supporting children at home to achieve and uphold excellent attitude to learning grades and for raising questions or concerns should they occur. 3. Equality and diversity Hunsley Trust is committed to: Eliminating discrimination and promoting equality and diversity in its policies, procedures and guidelines Delivering high quality teaching and services that meet the diverse needs of its pupil population and its workforce, ensuring that no individual or group is disadvantaged 4. Vision and Values Hunsley Primary Vision Statement Our Commitment Hunsley Primary is committed to being an innovative, stimulating, forward-thinking free school that makes the most of its freedoms to impact positively on pupils lives in the community and provide opportunities for all its children to make outstanding progress. Hunsley Primary children are capable, confident and creative thinkers and motivated, resilient, problem-solving learners. In particular, the school is committed to developing pupils as mathematicians and scientists. Our Children At Hunsley Primary, we believe that every child is an individual, ready, able and eager to learn. We are a fully inclusive school and we view every child as unique; we believe that all learning activities should be fully inclusive, personalised and challenging to meet all pupils needs. It is our prime aim that all children are enabled to make their best progress in an enabling learning environment, in the presence of their peers and the security of positive relationships with those around them. Our highly-trained classroom expert practitioners, from teachers, TAs, volunteers to associate Trust staff,

6 ensure that all children have the chance to work, discuss and learn with professionals who are passionate about education. By ensuring our children become responsible for directing, sustaining and reviewing their own learning, taking responsibility for critiquing their own and each other s work and for setting ambitious challenges, we aim to embed an understanding of the importance of refining work to its best point so that children feel a sense of high achievement as a result of the feedback they receive. By maximising the benefits of our close relationship with South Hunsley School and Sixth Form College and its subject specialists, we aim to secure a continuum of learning and a depth of conceptual understanding necessary for excellent progress in all curriculum areas, leading to the highest achievement at Key Stage 2, GCSE and A Level and, in due course, access to the most aspirational HE institutions, courses and professions for all children. Our Teaching and Learning Rationale Engagement, Enjoyment, Reflection, Achievement Our aim is to deliver teaching and learning which meets the needs of every single pupil in school, basing our planning on rigorous assessment and observation, mapping out challenging, supportive next steps. We plan our curriculum activities and our personalised teaching and learning approach to match the following rationale: Flexible, personalised timeframes for learning, based on excellent pupil-centred teaching teachers highly conversant in the complexities and specialisms of their practice Real learning themes and deep-thinking investigations, which prepare our pupils for 21 st Century living and engage them in learning with enjoyment and passion Inspirational and challenging learning activities, which have the principles of scientific enquiry and investigation ( working scientifically ) at their core, generating a lifelong love of learning, enquiry and discovery and a systematic means of approaching challenging and new tasks A union of primary partnerships with cross-phase and multi-disciplinary expertise for planning, delivery, monitoring and review, to ensure each child has the opportunity to build successfully on their learning from 4 to 19 Pupil resilience, independence, confidence and readiness to meet the rigours of education, through to university and beyond, and the demands of living and working in a rapidlychanging technological world Innovative, immersive and inclusive learning resources, combining the best of expert input, outdoor, hands-on, experiential learning and digital interfaces, to give pupils every opportunity to aspire to their full academic potential. 5. Definitions The principles of Assessment, Marking, Reporting and Feedback are as follows:

7 Unless engaging in summative assessment (see below for definition), assessment, marking and feedback should be dialogic, diagnostic and formative. Common features should be consistently flagged when marking across a group of pupils work and over time, e.g. presentation / handwriting, spelling, punctuation, specialist vocabulary, extended writing techniques A range of assessment and marking tools should be used, e.g. teacher, self and peer assessment Assessment of pupils learning should be linked to objectives and clear criteria that have been shared with pupils Feedback must be personalised Assessment and marking must lead to differentiated and personalised learning activities Marking and feedback should foster pride in pupils own work Marking and feedback should encourage achievement of varying kinds Feedback (both verbal and written) should encourage challenge and risk taking in learning Feedback should enable and encourage independent learning and problem-solving There should be opportunities included in assessment, marking and feedback to encourage revision, practice, redrafting and improvement of work as well as deepening of understanding through reflection and development. Assessment: Assessment is the process of gathering, recording, interpreting, using, and reporting information about a child s progress and achievement in developing knowledge, skills and attitudes. Assessment for Learning (AfL) involves using assessment in the classroom to raise pupils achievement. It usually takes place in the day-to day interactions between teachers and children. It emphasises the child s active role in his/her own learning, as it is based on the idea that pupils will improve most if they understand what the outcome of their learning should be, how they can achieve that outcome and the criteria for judging to what extent the outcome has been achieved. Providing feedback is central to AfL. Assessment of Learning (AoL), or summative assessment, focuses on assessing a child s learning at the end of a given period, such as a unit of work a term or a year. The emphasis is on measuring a child s progress at that given point towards curriculum objectives. Teachers use both kinds of assessment to record children s progress and achievement for the purpose of reporting to parents, teachers and other relevant persons, such as governors. The majority of assessment taking place in school will be formative assessment, leading to highly effective lesson planning and detailed feedback to pupils and parents. Assessment is a judgement of the pupil s understanding, knowledge and skill, as well as an informed understanding of the criteria by which assessment is taking place, including a high level of knowledge about appropriate next steps and learning targets. Assessment is informed by teachers and school leaders having excellent knowledge of phase-related skills, knowledge and understanding expected in their pupils, so that learning experiences can be planned accordingly.

8 At Hunsley Primary, we have a heightened understanding of the cycle of learning: Learning Progress in understanding Assessment PUPIL's PERSONALISED LEARNING JOURNEY Pupil Improvement and Response Feedback Planning for Next Steps Assessment must be recorded to track the pupils learning journeys and ensure that an appropriate rate of progress is being made. Assessment tracked against clear criteria also enables suitable interventions to be made to ensure misunderstandings are addressed and the pupil knows what they need to do to improve. Marking: Marking of pupil work will in Key Stage 1 and 2 will follow the guidance in the Appendix. Dylan William states that research has shown that grades/scores or grades/scores and a comment do not raise standards. Developmental comments alone raise standards, as they help pupils to understand the main purposes of their learning and thereby grasp what they need to do to improve. Pupils should have work marked and returned on a weekly basis. Parents should be offered the opportunity to add their own comments to learning activities completed at home and are given guidance on how to do this. Marking for Literacy All written work must be marked for literacy. For pupils to take pride in their work, they must realise that spelling, grammar and punctuation are not just important in English work but are essential for successful communication across the curriculum and beyond school. The literacy marking guidance is contained in the Appendix. Reporting: Two distinct types of reporting on assessment take place at Hunsley Primary:

9 Reporting to parents Reporting to Governors and other key individuals The communication taking place with parents regarding assessment of pupils is also supported and enhanced by face-to-face Progress Meetings (see Appendix). Reports will show a snapshot in time of each child s current achievement and attitude and predict outcomes against targets. Feedback: Feedback is an integral part of teaching; feedback in marking is as important as the teaching taking place in the classroom. As an extension of the differentiated, personalised learning experience in class, feedback is fundamentally highly-personalised teaching, direct from the teacher to the pupil. Written feedback, at its very best, is an on-going a dialogue of learning between the teacher and the pupil and should be visible as regular and continual in any written medium of work used by the pupils, from folders to books, homework to formal assessments. Written feedback informs both the teacher s planning and the pupil s progress in equal measure, giving clear, challenging and encouraging targets for improvement, as well as apt indication of where objectives have been met. Written feedback should follow the policy guidance in the Appendix. When marked work is returned to pupils, it is imperative to plan for learning time for pupils to reflect upon comments and targets and engage in a dialogue of continual improvement with the teacher. Teachers should always record and track pupil progress, to enable accurate reporting and data entry. Verbal feedback, at its very best, is challenging and encouraging, enabling the pupil to reflect on their own learning and question their own processes, as well as respond to teachers questions themselves. Verbal feedback is hard to capture, however it should form a significant portion of the contact time between teacher and pupils and there should be tangible evidence in the typicality of teacher/pupil interaction of the effective impact of verbal feedback on confidencebuilding, independent learning and progress. In the EYFS, verbal feedback is specifically important and must be in line with the guidance set down in the EYFS Teaching and Learning Policy, in line with Development Matters and the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework. 6. Systems and procedures

10 Children s learning and progress are continually assessed to ensure that teacher planning is appropriate and accurate. We assess children s progress against the national curriculum phases which offer expected levels of understanding, skill and knowledge at each stage of a child s school career. Each progression statement is accompanied by three what to look for guidance notes that enable teachers to evaluate individual pupil s progress against the statement and to identify the next steps in learning. These are: Working towards expectations (WTE) Meeting expectations (ME) Exceeding expectations (EE)* At Hunsley Primary, we use the Rising Stars curriculum progression framework, to ensure that targets are suitably rigorous and the stages of development and progress are clearly mapped out in sequence. We utilise Classroom Monitor s online platform to support teacher planning, assessment, tracking progress and reporting to parents, with the Rising Stars Progression Frameworks providing the ladder of progression to track against within the system. Assessment against clear criteria ensures that all children reach AT LEAST what is expected of them on nationally devised progression frameworks during each year of school. *In order to add value to the learning experience of our children, Hunsley Primary Teaching and Learning Policy sets out the aim for all children to exceed what is expected of them on nationally devised progression frameworks. Reporting to Parents In the EYFS, parents receive regular updates via on the progress of their child, through the online parental reporting system. They also receive termly written reports detailing their child s developmental progress against the Early Learning Goals, as stipulated in the EYFS Framework. Parents are also consulted throughout the academic year, to ensure that their assessment of the child s progress is also accounted for in the Early Learning Profile. In Key Stage 1 and 2, termly reports are sent home to parents, to share progress data and attitude to learning assessments. 7. Monitoring of compliance with and effectiveness of the policy The policy links directly with the Hunsley Primary Monitoring, Evaluation, Intervention and Planning Policy. School leaders are responsible for ensuring assessment judgements are moderated and standardised, as part of the training plan for all staff.

11 Weekly work scrutinies ensure that standards of marking and feedback are comparable across all teaching staff and the delivery of all subject areas. A cycle of monitoring focused on work scrutiny is carried out by all school leaders, and where the focus is subject-specific assessment, marking and feedback, this process is performed by subject leaders. School leaders should arrange half-termly external standardisation forums, to ensure that the quality of assessment is comparable with Hunsley Primary s highest performing, outstanding school partners. The scrutiny of assessment and progress data sits as part of the whole school Monitoring, Evaluation, Intervention and Planning Cycle, culminating in presentation of termly data to Governors and the Hunsley Trust Executive Team. 8. Review This policy will be reviewed within 2 years of the date of implementation.

12 Appendix 1: Hunsley Primary Written Feedback Policy High quality practice in teaching, insightful questioning and written feedback is implemented consistently by all teachers. To enable pupils to thrive, making sustained progress, written feedback is Regular and continual A personalised two-way teaching and learning dialogue Employed consistently to inform learners progress, teachers differentiated planning and leaders monitoring, evaluation and intervention Written feedback is an integral part of teaching, as important as the teaching taking place in the classroom. Written feedback, at its very best, is an on-going, two-way dialogue between the teacher and pupil, and it should be visible as regular and continual in any written medium of work used by the pupils, from folders to exercise books, homework to formal assessments. The marking of pupils work incorporates the principles of Assessment for Learning and informs the pupil of next steps needed to make sustained progress, as well as the teacher of the next steps required in the teaching process. In this way, written feedback informs teacher planning and pupil progress in equal measure, giving clear, challenging and encouraging targets for improvement, as well as apt indication of where objectives have been met. Written feedback provided by the teacher should be in a form appropriate for the individual pupil, and all pupils must be made aware of the criteria being used for both the production and the assessment of their work. Written feedback allows both parties to reflect on the learning that has taken place and informs precise differentiation for future learning; it should comment, question and instruct as a matter of course. When marked work is returned to pupils, it is imperative to plan time for pupils to reflect upon comments and targets, and respond, in turn, to the teacher. Written feedback should foster the development of an effective learning relationship. Pupils should be given regular opportunities to assess their own and their peers work, and have their judgements qualified by the teacher too. Teachers should always record and track pupil progress, to enable accurate reporting and data entry. Types and Frequency of written feedback There are two types of written feedback that teachers and pupils can use to sustain learning and great progress:

13 High quality teacher feedback Pupil-led self-assessment and peer-assessment validated and enriched by the teacher s own comments High Quality Teacher Feedback: Dylan William states that research has shown that grades/scores or grades/scores and a comment do not raise standards. Dylan William states that research has shown that grades/scores or grades/scores and a comment do not raise standards. Developmental comments alone raise standards, as they help pupils to understand the main purposes of their learning and thereby grasp what they need to do to improve. Children should receive written feedback according to this policy at least once a week. Parents should be offered the opportunity to add their own comments to learning activities completed at home and are given guidance on how to do this. Quality marking should identify at least one strength and one target teachers also should ask questions at regular intervals to engage the pupils in deeper thinking. Written feedback should be laid out on the piece of work using the following symbols: S Strength: positive comment which relates to the learning objectives /success criteria T Target or Next Steps : one area relating to the learning objectives where the success criteria have not met Q Question: these may appear throughout the marked piece or at the end of the piece to encourage further pupil reflection, to check understanding and to engage in dialogue. The pupil must be given time to answer the question and their answer must be checked thereafter. Marking for Literacy All written work must be marked for literacy. For pupils to take pride in their work, they must realise that spelling, grammar and punctuation are not just important in English work but are essential for successful communication across the curriculum and beyond school. Work should be marked for literacy using the following symbols: Sp P C indicates a spelling error indicates a punctuation error Indicates that a capital letter has been missed or used incorrectly

14 // indicates that a new paragraph should have been started? indicates that the sentence / answer does not make sense ^ indicates that a word or phrase is missing N indicates a numerical errors has been made Sl Indicates informal English (Slang) has been used. Te indicates the wrong tense has been used St indicates the sentence structure is non-standard Circle indicates an incorrect word (e.g. homophone) has been used within a sentence Monitoring and Evaluation Subject leaders must ensure marking of subject specific focus is rigorous and accurate School leaders must undertake the work scrutiny in accordance with the whole school self- evaluation cycle.

15 Appendix 2: Feedback is the key to outstanding development It is clear that specific, skills-based feedback, both from teaching staff and peers, is the most effective way of making progress. We recognise that pupils must be taught to understand the specific terms of technical language so that they can make specific improvements. In our marking and feedback approach, we follow the Hunsley Trust policy of Strengths, Targets and Questions to enable the children to engage in a process of continual improvement and a dialogue of assessment. When we offer Strengths and Targets (verbally and in writing), we use the technical language of the specific subject or topic being discussed and will train the children to do so too - so that peer- and self-assessments offer the same level of specific feedback. As with Ron Berger s instruction on the value of critique and feedback when drafting and re-drafting for success in Austin s Butterfly (below), we teach the children to follow these three guidelines: Be thoughtful Be selective Be precise