Assessment is fundamental to the teaching and learning process.  The main purpose of assessment is to enable each teacher to find out what children know, understand and can do.  Assessment also gives the teacher the opportunity to better understand how an individual best learns – visually, practically, mentally or a combination of methods. This then allows all teachers to plan appropriate learning opportunities to ensure all children are enjoying their education and making adequate progress. 

 

Aims and objectives

  • To identify the individual needs of each child in order to raise their level of achievement.
  • To provide feedback to children and identify their next steps in learning.
  • To plan for future learning for each child through review and target setting.
  • To track individual children over time to raise their level of achievement.
  • To provide information for parents, Governors and outside bodies as well as evidence for moderation.
  • To comply with statutory requirements

As well as continually assessing children’s progress, we use an online assessment tool called B-Squared Connecting Steps to track progress over time to ensure individuals are make outstanding progress. Teachers update this frequently to ensure they have a secure understanding of where children are in their learning and how to move them on with next steps. We use Evisense to collect photo and video evidence towards each child’s learning journey and this links directly to Connecting Steps allowing staff to ensure their judgements are secure and evidence based.

On admission, pupils receive support and assessment from specialist leaders in Occupational Therapy to establish areas of need/development, Speech and language input to provide the communication tools and strategies to learn and integrate and to establish cognition and retention criteria to accurately match pupils to their correct learning pathway.  Other assessments by specialist practitioners are carried out in a subtle and relaxed manner to ascertain further needs in regulation and suitability to learning traits.  The children are looked at as a whole person and support is identified for every area of need to ensure they thrive and enjoy their learning journey with us.

Target setting

All pupils have individual targets on their PLP’s for Maths, English and SEMH containing next steps in learning.  These are identified by the class staff working with the child and are updated termly in line with progress made. These targets are additional to academic targets as they link directly to each child’s Education and Healthcare Plan (EHCP). These targets are reviewed half termly and feed into annual review meetings, ensuring that all targets by the Local Authority are met over the course of the Key Stage, as advised.

 

Reports

Reports are sent out termly at Christmas, Easter and at the end of the summer term.  Each report will provide parents with an update progress score from B-Squared, the targets for the coming term and a summary of progress made during that term.