Assessment is an integral part of learning and teaching. It helps to provide a picture of a child’s or young person’s progress and achievements and to identify next steps in learning. Our approaches to assessment at St. Stephen’s promote learner engagement and ensure appropriate support so that all learners can achieve their aspirational goals and maximise their potential.
Pupils are engaged in all aspects of assessment processes and are afforded an element of choice and personalisation in showing that they have achieved the intended outcomes.As children move through the curriculum, they will experience a range of approaches to assessment.
Assessment supports learning by focusing on the process of children and young people moving from where they are in their learning towards their desired goals. Assessment is also be used to identify and plan any support they will need to achieve these goals.
At St. Stephen’s, every lesson begins with staff clarifying and sharing learning intentions and success criteria. Pupils are also often involved in the creation of these success criteria (i.e. ‘I can’t achieve this until I do…’) Both staff and learners foster a sense of achievement by sharing challenging and realistic expectations. Sharing success criteria along with learning intentions allows learners to ‘see what success looks like’.
High quality interactions between learners and staff lie at the heart of assessment as part of learning and teaching. These interactions promote thinking and demonstrate learning and development. They are based on thoughtful questions, careful listening and reflective responses and effective feedback strategies. Pupils also receive timely and accurate feedback about what they have learned and about how well and how much they have learned. This helps them to move forward in their learning and to identify what they need to do next and to decide who can help them build up their knowledge, understanding and skills. These strategies help pupils understand that assessment will support them in their learning and help them develop ambition to learn in increasing breadth and depth.
Children can also develop their confidence through thinking about and reflecting on their own learning. They are given time to reflect on their own and peers’ work and to identify and reflect on the evidence of their progress and their next steps. Through frequent and regular conversations with informed adults, they are able to identify and understand the progress they are making across all aspects of their learning and achievements. Pupils at St. Stephen’s also share their progress, personal targets and daily reflections in their homework diaries. As they develop skills in self and peer assessment, learners will build confidence and take more ownership for managing their own learning. By focusing on the processes of learning as well as on their achievement of outcomes, they will become reflective and positive contributors to assessment.
Staff at St. Stephen’s are continuously assessing pupils’ progress both formally and informally. Parents and carers are kept up-to-date with pupil progress through comments in homework diaries, parent planners, Parents as Partners events, curriculum days, twice-yearly parent consultation evenings and end-of-year report cards.
