Assessment
Assessment in EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage)
In Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) the children are assessed formatively (using teacher judgement) all year round. Throughout the year, there are assessment points in which the teacher will use their judgement to assess whether the children are in-line with the Early Learning Goals (ELG).
The children are assessed across both the Prime areas and Specific areas. These are the Prime areas your child will be assessed in: Communication and language; Personal, Social and Emotional Development; and Physical Development. These are the Specific areas your child will be assessed in: Literacy; Mathematics; Expressive Arts and Design; and Understand the World. The children must meet all of the Early Learning Goals (ELG’s) in order to achieve Reception ELG at the end of the academic year.
Formal Assessments
EYFS baseline is an activity based assessment of pupils’ starting points in language, communication and literacy; and mathematics. It is a short, task-based assessment, which is not used to label or track individual pupils. Schools are required to carry out the assessment within the first 6 weeks of pupils starting reception. No numerical score is shared and the data will only be used at the end of year 6 to form the school-level progress measure. However, teachers will receive a series of short, narrative statements that tell them how their pupils performed in the assessment. These can be used to inform teaching within the first term. The assessment will enable us to show the progress pupils make from reception until the end of KS2.
KS1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC) is a test taken individually by all children in Year 1 during June. It is designed to give teachers and parents information on how your child is progressing in phonics. It is a way for teachers to ensure that children are making sufficient progress with their phonics skills to read words and that they are on track to become fluent readers who can enjoy reading for pleasure and for learning. It will also help to identify whether your child needs additional support at this stage so that they do not fall behind in this vital early reading skill. The PSC is made up of 40 words. 20 are real words and 20 are pseudo words. Pseudo words are words that are phonically decodable but are not actual words with an associated meaning e.g. brip, snorb. Pseudo words are included to specifically assess whether your child can decode a word using phonics skills and not their memory. Historically, the pass mark has been 32/40.
KS1 SATs are non-statutory as of 2024, and will be administered throughout May. They consist of: • Reading • Grammar, punctuation and spelling and • Maths. Year 2 tests are marked by the class teacher after all the tests have been administered and the mark scheme is released. Your child’s marks will be used in conjunction with teacher assessment to give a broader picture of their attainment. The results will be used to measure your child's progress.
Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) is statutory for all Year 4 pupils. The purpose of the MTC is to determine whether pupils can recall their times tables fluently (up to 12 x 12), which is essential for future success in mathematics. It will help schools to identify pupils who have not yet mastered their times tables, so that additional support can be provided. The check is completed on Chromebooks, it has 25 questions and is taken during June.
KS2 SATs are administered to Year 6 during May. They consist of: • Reading paper • Grammar, punctuation and spelling paper • Maths papers
The Y6 SATs are set and marked externally. For Reading, Maths and Grammar, punctuation and spelling, the marks on the SATS paper solely make up the child’s grade (there is no teacher judgement). For Writing in Year 6, children are assessed against the ‘Teacher assessment frameworks at the end of key stage 2.’ In writing, children are assessed as below, working towards, expected or greater depth. In order to be assessed as expected, children have to be consistently using ALL of the writing features.
All of these results are used to measure your child's progress and the school's performance.
Assessing RE Formative assessment: occurs during the learning process. Summative assessment: occurs at the end of the learning process, often as a test. RE is assessed formatively. For each unit of RE, there are a set of objectives. After every lesson, the class teacher assesses whether any objectives have been met and highlights the ‘I can’ grid in the child’s RE books. At the end of the unit, the teacher looks at the ‘I can’ grid to see how many of the statements have been met.
Assessing Foundation Subjects Formatively, at the end of every lesson, each class teacher marks each child against the lesson’s objective, as attained, partially attained, not attained or not taught if the child was absent. At the end of each half-term, this information is collated by the class teacher onto an assessment sheet. This information feeds into the summative assessment which is recorded on our tracking system, Sonar, and is reported to parents and carers in their child's end of year report.