Category Archives: Assessment

Primary curriculum conversation day – Friday 7 March

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Education Scotland is holding a conversation day focused on the primary curriculum on Friday 7 March in Duloch Primary School, Dunfermline. This event is aimed at school leaders.  We are keen to take stock of how the curriculum is developing in primary schools and hear school leaders’ views and experiences.

The purpose of the day is to:
•    consider how the curriculum is developing in the primary sector, particularly in relation to the raised expectations; and
•    identify areas that require further support and what that support needs to look like.

There will be opportunities to hear from a variety of colleagues as to how they are taking forward curriculum development at a strategic level in their schools as well as time for discussion.

If you would be interested in attending please contact margaret.mcguinness@educationscotland.gov.uk. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Please note travel expenses are not paid for conversation days.

Brewstometer – new online creativity measuring tool

Creativity is increasingly recognised as an essential higher order thinking skill for learning, life and work. A new online creativity measuring tool,Brewstometer, was launched at SLF.

The Brewstometer introduces the principles of creativity and helps learners reflect upon and evaluate any creative experience they had recently, this could include a lesson, a workshop, a performance, a gallery visit or project.

As an online resource you can use the Brewstometer as best suited to your learning environment needs, whether it be a whole class or small groups or one-to-one. The Brewstometer has been developed by Creative Scotland and Education Scotland as part of Scotland’s Creative Learning Plan

Learning Experiences Catalogue now launched

Education Scotland has announced the launch of the Learning Experiences Catalogue which aims to develop a sustainable programme of relevant, engaging and challenging learning experiences for children and young people aged 3–15 within a broad general education.

Learning experiences have been designed to support children and young people to learn to create, collect, code, animate, bake, garden, build, tell stories all set within contexts and many of them are interdisciplinary.

The catalogue provides learners with a brief description of each learning experience which they can read or can be read to them by clicking the audio file beside the LearnCat icon. Graphics have been designed to support learners in understanding where the learning will take place, which curriculum areas they will learn within and who they will learn with. Educators are provided with more information about each learning experience and planning guidance.

Each academic term a new collection of learning experiences will be launched. The autumn collection of learning experiences will be live from September 2013.

Explore the Learning Experiences Catalogue today.

Glow – the M-Factor

The M-Factor is an interdisciplinary project aimed at Midlothian pupils in the upper stages of primary school (P6 and P7).  This project uses the context of the pop music industry to combine a range of curricular areas that enable pupils to develop knowledge and skills.

The M-Factor challenges pupils to write and record a pop song and create an associated pop video.
Pupils, teachers and parents throughout Scotland can get involved by voting for their favourites and a daily top 10 chart will be produced.

Click here to find out more (Glow log-in required)

Assessing progress and achievement professional learning resources

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Education Scotland has recently published Professional Learning Resources on assessing progress and achievement designed to support quality assurance and moderation activities.

The resources are a work-in-progress and draw on emerging practice from practitioners from 3-15. We would very much like to hear what you think about what has been produced so far. Your feedback will help inform on-going work on annotated exemplification of achievement of levels in each of the curriculum areas to be shared through NAR.

Click here for more info

Help name the new CfE senior phase benchmarking tool

As announced on Engage for Education last week, the Scottish Government and its partners are developing a new CfE senior phase benchmarking tool to help local authorities and secondary schools to analyse, compare and improve the performance of pupils in the senior phase of Curriculum for Excellence.  One of the early tasks on which the project team are seeking views is the name of the tool.  A canvassing exercise has been launched on Engage and Glow and will run until Friday November 30. The results will be passed to the Project Board and CfE Management Board for their final consideration.  Take part here,we would welcome your ideas and suggestions.

Curriculum for Excellence: making good assessment decisions 3–18

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Education Scotland, in partnership with SQA, has published a resource to support the making of good assessment decisions.  The resource consists of a ‘Wall’ poster and a ‘Desk’ poster. 

The posters illustrate the stages of quality assurance when making assessment decisions. Assessment 3-18 must be valid, reliable, fair and manageable for all involved and must be consistently applied for all learners in all centres. 

The posters can be used by local authorities, schools, colleges and other stakeholders to support the development of moderation/verification practices and as a platform for discussion.

Further support materials to exemplify these resources are in development and will be available by the end of the year.