The Purpose and Importance of Assessment
Assessment is the process of obtaining, analysing and interpreting evidence for use by both students and teachers to enable the review, planning and improvement of learning. It is fully integrated with the delivery of the curriculum and is an essential component of effective practice.
- Assessment lets our students see what progress they are making and provides their teachers and the academy with accurate and timely information which assists us to plan how to help students make further progress and reward them for the improvements they make.
- Assessment enables us to report information to parents/carers, as well as information to help older children make choices about the examination courses they will follow and the qualifications and future careers they will seek.
- Assessment helps us to set targets for the future by consistently measuring our students’ performance. We are constantly reviewing our academy provision because we strive to provide the best possible service to our community.
Understanding Our Assessments
Assessment at Magna comprises of four types of assessments:
- Low stakes, ongoing assessment for learning that takes place in every lesson and is not recorded
- Regular Knowledge Retrieval Tasks/ Tests
- Regular and Cumulative assessments
- Mock/End of year Examinations
Knowledge Retrieval Tests
Depending on the number of lessons in a two week cycle, each subject will have the flexibility to either use formal knowledge retrieval tests or embed knowledge retrieval tasks within the curriculum linked to the knowledge organisers. These are low stake tests/tasks, identifying gaps in a students knowledge and to embed the knowledge learnt through teachers targeting areas for immediate improvement and celebrating areas of strength. These will always be peer/self-marked and questions that are frequently incorrectly answered will prompt a review of the teaching of that content. They should also form areas of focus for the next lessons to develop the students capacity to store and retrieve accurate information. This knowledge will inevitably be based upon the students’ self-quizzing within that subject for that unit.
End of Topic Assessments
- Each subject will assess students at regular intervals throughout an academic year. The timings of these assessments will be appropriate for that subject curriculum and taken at the end of each unit/topic/ aligned with data points in line with a subjects curriculum plan.
- Each assessment will assess what has been taught within the current unit/topic and a smaller percentage will assess content from previous units/topics to promote retrieval. This will help to provide a more accurate attainment and projected grade that will be reported.
- These assessments will support the development of students’ examination skills over time.
mock/End of Year Examinations
- KS3 students will sit an end of year holistic assessment assessing the content from that year’s academic subject curriculum. This is in addition to their regular and cumulative assessments and will last 50 minutes and will have a combination of short and extended answer questions. These will take place during normal timetabled subject lessons and will be timetabled during a specific time period. They will be marked by the class teacher, moderated within the department and an attainment level will be assigned to the level the student achieved against the subject’s Age Related Expectations (ARE). Subjects will continue with their regular curriculum delivery while embedding a focus on personalised learning checklists (PLCs) and effective revision techniques throughout the designated time period. Outcomes will be recorded centrally in a standardised academy key stage overview tracking document in a shared Google file to help plan and monitor student interventions and set changes.
- Year 10 and 12 students will participate in one end of year examination sitting at the end of the academic year in all subjects. Year 11 and 13, students will participate in two mock examination sittings each year. These, where appropriate, will use Vocational, GCSE or A Level examination material and grade boundaries as directed by the trust from the curriculum covered until the point of mock assessment. Subjects will continue with their regular curriculum delivery while embedding a focus on personalised learning checklists (PLCs) and effective revision techniques throughout the designated time period. The outcomes will enable us to see how much our students have developed over the full range of skills in each subject and how much they have developed their overall subject knowledge. The outcomes will inform us of what students may benefit from targeted intervention. Outcomes will be recorded centrally in a standardised academy key stage overview tracking document in a shared Google file to help plan and monitor student interventions and set changes.
Assessment Points and Academic Reports
Academic reports will be generated twice a year for each year group. Parents/Carers will be notified in writing in advance of every assessment point period to help with preparations at home, access effective revision resources in support and receive key dates. Students will receive a printed copy of their report and parents/carers will be able to access an electronic copy using their Arbor login accounts. There will be a subject parents’ evening strategically placed for each year group where students and parents/carers can meet with their child’s subject teachers to discuss their attainment and agree on targets for improvement. For all year groups, reports will indicate the attainment that the student has made within each of their subjects.
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