Ingham McGhie, PE Department, St Margaret’s Academy.
I, alongside other members of the St Margaret’s Academy PE department, attended the PE network meeting on Friday 10th January at Broxburn Academy. Each secondary school in West Lothian was well represented giving a rich and meaningful meeting. The focus of the meeting was to give a set of pupils a practical grade for National 5 (badminton) as a type of moderation process. Continue reading PE Network – National 5 performance grading
John Slavin – PTC Mathematics
Catherine Kerr PTC Science gave a presentation on the new Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool on the 6th December in St. Margaret’s Academy. The new SPBT will be used in place of the STACs which recorded the SQA results.
There are several major differences in the two systems. The new SPBT will have 7 categories, four national and three local ones.
The overall presentation is much more visual than STACs. The home page shows the dashboard which has the four national measures, based on the national priorities. It is called a dashboard to emphasise the interconnectedness of the measures.
Continue reading Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool (SPBT) Workshop
Anne Keenan (Health and Technology) and Laura Watson (Science Department)
Internal verification is a huge aspect of the new CfE qualifications. Over the last year we have become very familiar with the process of internal verification through teaching Skills for Work: Laboratory Science and Skills for Work: Early Education and Childcare. Both of these courses are internally assessed and require the assessors and verifiers to have a sound understanding of the assessment procedure to enable the internal verification to be carried out accordingly.
The key to this process running smoothly is for the assessor and verifier to have an agreed and shared understanding of the standards that must be reached in order to ensure the candidates’ evidence meets the assessment requirements.
It is the role of the assessor and verifier to discuss and record (SQA guidelines) the agreed assessment, any amendments and an in-depth discuss to ensure the candidates’ evidence meets the assessment standard.
Internal verification provides us as teachers with the responsibility of ensuring standards are met, allowing ourselves to draw on our professional judgement in deciding whether candidates evidence meets the set requirements, enabling them to gain the overall qualification.
Mary Gibson – St Margaret’s Cluster Development Officer
On Tuesday 12th February all primary staff from across St Margaret’s cluster, representatives from Cedarbank School and teachers from the English Department met to embark on the first of a two stage exercise to moderate and assess reading at Early, First, Second and Third level. Early and First level meetings took place in Howden St Andrew’s and St Nicholas’ primaries while Second and Third level staff worked in St Margaret’s Academy. The overall aim of this exercise was to establish a standard across the cluster of “secure” learning in one outcome.
The process involved using a template* to plan and deliver lessons to pupils who were secure at Lit1- 19a, Eng 1-19a, Eng 2-19a and Eng 3-19a. Passages were provided for selection according to the needs of the pupils involved. Continue reading Moderation and Assessment of Reading in St Margaret’s Cluster
IS Day presentation by Catherine Kerr (PTC Science)
To be honest I’m not really an expert on the subject. As a starting point I walked about the school asking staff what their understanding of Assessment and Moderation was. The responses were really interesting as the teachers that I put on the spot (mainly un-promoted staff) all had very similar understandings, concerns, and misconceptions. My Assessment and Moderation presentation therefore focussed on the teachers at St. Margaret’s point of view and my hope was that it would build on what was already known as well as clarify some of the key messages from educational policy and best practice.
The information provided came from several sources including the Education Scotland website which provides lots of current information on Assessment and Moderation. In addition I accessed the National Assessment Resource (NAR). As a database I think the NAR is a bit of a let down but the search facility is useful. I searched for ‘sharing the standards’, which brought up different authorities examples of moderation some of which were excellent and used throughout my presentation. All of the information I thought staff might find useful has been placed in a ring binder for each curricular area.
Further useful links include:
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