Diagnostic

We assess the children daily – informally during lessons and at the end of the day when marking their learning. This useful information has a direct impact on the next days teaching. 

At the end of the week, the teachers check over the weeks learning and decide if the children have met the  curriculum objective. This has a direct impact on making a judgement about whether the objective needs to be revisited later in the term and/or taught in a different way. 

At the end of a term, the children complete “Show me what you knows,” these are formal assessments which cover the whole year group curriculum in Maths and Reading. Teachers do not see these beforehand and thus do not teach to a test. They give us a snapshot of how your child is progressing in relation to the whole curriculum. 

Reading

The PIRA test assesses comprehension. It gives teachers information about what kinds of questions the pupil got right or wrong. We use this information to then plan our Guided Reading to ensure the children get extra practise of question styles they found challenging. 

Maths 

The PUMA assessment gives us information about the 5 strands of learning:

Place value, Number, Geometry, Measures and Statistics. We create class gap analysis (we have provided your child’s personal analysis for summer assessment) to plan future teaching and learning. We use this to look at class trends. Please use this analysis to find out what your child can work on. 

Writing

Writing is assessed via teacher judgment. Class teachers use weekly independent writing and look for evidence that your child has used the skills from the curriculum to see if your child has met the expected standard. Leadership moderates these during Book Looks to (dis)agree with the teachers judgment. We are also externally moderated throughout the year. 

What happens to the test scores?

For Reading and Maths, these raw scores are converted into a scaled score (provided for us by Puma and Pira). This is a national score which makes progress easier to track. For example a test may be out of 30 in Autumn, 25 in Spring and 50 in Summer – the raw score would not be useful here however once it is turned into a scaled score, we can see improvements in the children’s learning and make comparisons easier.  

Then what?

This scaled score then tells us if your child has made the expected level or not (please see scale below). This means we can compare scores with children in other schools, across the country. 

Teachers then complete Class Action Plans which show us how the class are achieving in terms of progress and attainment (their level). I have attached an example for you. Teachers are challenged on progress data each term by leadership. Children not making good progress are given differentiated learning in class and/ or join booster groups arranged by class teachers with the aim of catching up before the end of the next term.

Finally

Leadership collect whole school data to analyse whole school trends and patterns. We check different groups of children are achieving in line with each other. 

This data generates whole school priorities.