Assessment at St George's
Our full policy can be found at the end of this page. Key principles for assessment are:
Section One: Principles and Rationale
At St George’s Primary School we believe that effective assessment is crucial to our success. If we are to ensure that our learning and teaching is effective, we have to make sure that our assessment policies are meaningful to pupils, parents and staff.
We fully embrace the key principles of assessment outlined by the Department for Education (see appendix A) that assessment should:
- Give reliable information to parents about how their child, and their child’s school, is performing
- Help drive improvement for pupils and teachers
- Make sure the school is keeping up with external best practice and innovation
We believe that assessment in our school should;
- Provide information that is purposeful, reliable and relevant to children, parents and staff.
- Be focused on learning.
- Actively involve children and motivate them in their learning.
- Ensure that we can monitor every child’s progress, to guarantee achievement for all. Our aim is to ensure that there is no discrimination or patterns of unfairness in children’s attainment and achievement.
- Celebrate progress and achievement.
- Inform our learning and teaching.
- Help us to set targets and ways forward.
- Be benchmarked against national indicators and moderated with the support of local schools and the local authority.
We define assessment, marking and feedback as:
Assessment
This is the process by which staff, children and parents evaluate children’s learning. Sometimes this can be measured and reported against age related expectations.
Assessment should make children successful learners by identifying their stage of development and achievement (academic, social, creative and spiritual) and developing their knowledge, skills and understanding in order for them to achieve their maximum potential. Assessment must never lower expectations.
Feedback
Feedback is central to how we develop teaching and learning at St George’s Primary. It can be delivered orally or in writing. It can be delivered before, during and after a lesson. What is important is that it informs children about their progress and helps them to understand their learning better and improve. At St George’s Primary we are working hard to develop high quality feedback principles that are focused on children having the opportunity to respond to their feedback. Feedback should be as immediate as possible and not rely on extensive written marking.
It is the quality of the feedback process that is important.
Marking
Marking is a form of feedback. It is the formal written comments or markings made in children’s books about their work. Marking is part of our feedback strategy. It can be done by the class teacher or teaching assistant or on occasions by children themselves or their peers. Marking should be purposeful, immediate and provide clear feedback. We expect every piece of work to be reviewed by class teacher but very few pieces of work will have detailed marking. This is not necessary, manageable or the best way to provide feedback.
Section Two: Assessment Principles at St George’s
Assessment is simply an evaluation of learning. Outcome of assessment is what can be done to help children learn as well as they can. Assessment is often described in two approaches that should be viewed as inter dependent not exclusive.
