This document discusses assessments in schools and the evolution from standardized tests to assessing pupils' progress (APP). It summarizes GL Assessment's role in providing both formative and summative assessments online and through their Testwise system. Key points covered include the phasing out of KS3 SATs, implementing APP across all subjects by 2011, and using periodic and transitional assessments to make holistic judgments of student progress.
2. The Assessment (R)evolution
• Where we seem to be heading with Assessment in
schools
• Life after KS3 SATs extinction
• An Introduction to e Assessment
3. Where we were
• Mandatory ‘End of Key Stage’ tests (SATs)
• Optional SATs
• Teacher assessment
• Commercial assessments, summative and formative
Where we are
• Optional end of Key Stage 3 National Tests
• Teacher assessment
• Commercial assessments
4. Where next?
• Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP)
• Daily, periodic and transitional assessments
(including assessment of summative and formative type)
• School Report Card
5. Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP)
• ‘Assessment is at the heart of an effective curriculum
and is a fundamental part of good teaching and learning’
• ‘Assessment enables learners to recognise achievement
and make progress, and teachers to shape and adapt
their teaching to individual needs and aspirations’
• ‘Central to achieving this vision are the assessing pupils’
progress (APP) materials’
Mick Waters, Head of Curriculum, QCA
6. The APP rollout
The DCSF Assessment for Learning Strategy (May
2008) sets out the financial and professional
development support available to your school to help
develop APP.
The expectation is that by 2011 all schools will have
embedded the APP approach to teacher assessment.
7. Timetable for APP materials
Published 2008/9 Future
Key Stage 2
Reading,
writing and
mathematics
Key Stage 3
Reading, writing and
Mathematics (revised)
Key Stage 1
Reading, writing and
Mathematics
Key Stage 3 Science
Key Stage 3 ICT
Key Stage 3
Foundation Subjects
Key Stages 1, 2 and 3
Speaking and Listening
Primary
Science
8. ‘Daily’ assessment opportunities
• Extended or shorter focused pieces of writing in a variety
of different forms for a range of purposes
• Information from different curriculum areas
• Text annotation or visual organisers such as thought
mapping, storyboards or timelines
• Oral work, such as pupil presentations to the class
• Contributions to class discussions, drama activities or
discussions with teachers
• Observations of learners’ behaviour and interactions
• Learners’ self-assessment (AfL implications)
9. Formal assessments
• To make a holistic judgment need supporting
information.
– We have looked at day to day data and assessment
opportunities but we will also need information from periodic and
transitional assessments, of both summative and formative
types.
• What can GL Assessment offer?
– ‘Periodic’
– ‘Transitional’
10. The Guardian
‘Sats don't have all the answers’
Fran Abrams, Tuesday 21 October, 2008
The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/21/sats-schooltables
14. The School Report Card
Aims of the School Report Card Target Group
• Provide a clear set of outcomes against which a school will be judged
• Recognise the value of schools’ work for all children
• provide a balanced account of outcomes achieved and the degree of
challenge facing schools
Schools
• provide a balanced and comprehensive account of each school’s
performance
• Inform parents choice of school and improve schools’ accountability to
parents
• Provide information in an easy to understand format
Parents
• Provide a means of supporting the vision for 21st
century schools
• Help to hold schools to account for what is most important
• Incentivise schools in the right way
Government
• Support the school inspection process Ofsted
16. An Introduction to e-Assessment
• Online testing from GL Assessment
• Tests available online
• The Testwise online delivery system
• Why test online?
• Report function
• Live demo
• Q&A
17. Online tests from GL Assessment
• Assessment is our business - over 3 million students take our
tests each year
• Over 40 tests for students of all ages
• Measuring reasoning ability, processing skills, literacy and
numeracy skills and screening tests for SEN
• Our five most popular tests are now available online –
CAT, SRS, GRT, PiM and PiE
• Our online delivery, scoring and reporting system (Testwise)
manages the process
• Over 500,000 online tests taken in 2008
18. Online tests from GL Assessment
Cognitive Ability Test
(CAT) Age 7:6 - 17
Suffolk Reading
Scale
(SRS) 6 - 14
Group Reading Test
(GRT) 6 - 14
Progress in English
(PiE) 7 - 11
Progress in Maths
(PiM) 6 - 14
19. Testwise online delivery system
• Suite of administrative tools used to load and assign
candidates to tests, manage the users and maintain the
database
• Delivers the test to the student
• Reporting tools that can perform complex analysis, processing
and reporting functions
20. Why do e-Assessments anyway?
• Same rigorous results as paper and pencil tests
• No more marking - results available automatically, seconds
after the tests are complete
• Detailed, diagnostic reports that highlight areas of strength
and need
• Online testing is motivating for students with the test feeling
less formal and intimidating
• Compatible with most MIS systems
• Better knowledge, better teaching
• Reclaim (some of) our Sunday evenings
21. Reporting results
• A variety of analyses of the same data
• Reports can be run more than once to enable inclusion of
‘catch-ups’ in the analysis
• Information can be imported as csv data file or downloaded
as a pdf
• Reports include rich, meaningful data on ability, knowledge
and potential, and offer grade indicators for public
examinations, if required
Teacher assessment is there but often seen as the poor relation of the externally set tests.
Commercial tests available to support teacher assessment but as league tables used externally set test results there was an understandable move to ‘teach to the test’ and make other assessment indicators subservient.
Seems little point in continuing to do SATS optionally when even the Government has agreed with teachers to scrap them as a mandatory requirement. Obviously the previously optional SATS now also seem equally redundant.
Teacher assessment now takes centre stage. With its new importance comes the need for a framework of measurement, this seems likely to be the previously partially rolled-out APP the need for supporting information for assessment judgements also remains strong.
APP materials are being rolled-out now (see later slide for timetable).
There is also movement to a new vocabulary of assessment.
Daily (usual classroom assessment activities such as oral quick questions, annotating work etc. pretty informal, very formative)
Periodic (at end of a piece of work, a few weeks work or a particular topic etc,)
Transitional (end of year, end of phase, probably the most summative of the three)
Good to see that assessment remains as a vital part of T & L.
QCA certainly seem to see APP as having integral role in forming a framework for assessment.
These are thing that good teachers have always been doing to move their pupils on.
They are informal and classroom based.
Pupils own assessment and peer assessments forms a part.
The assessment is not for league tables but is all about assessment to inform and guide future learning i.e. AfL
Where do more formal tests fit in?
There is still a requirement to report NC levels in English, Maths, Science to government. Also Teacher assessed levels must be available within school for parents and other interested parties including OFSTED.
Daily assessment is quite rightly highly biased towards formative information but to gain a holistic and summative assessment judgement we need supporting evidence from a variety of sources including comparative performance information set against national levels.
There has been much talk in the educational press re. the CAT as a ‘replacement’ for SATS, this is misleading.
The CAT is not a ‘curriculum’ test i.e. not a test of a body of knowledge. The CAT is a test of reasoning ability, giving useful information on the likely ease a pupil will have in assimilating new information in a range of formats.
The CAT is also not a replacement for SATS in other ways:
- Most importantly it tells us something new about the child not what know (where they are now) but where they could be. This used with the daily, periodic and transitional assessment allows us to more accurately plan for the individual’s future learning.
- Unlike the SATS the CAT needs no preparation, no teaching to the test (limiting the curriculum), no need for ‘mock CAT’.
Speak for around 20 minutes including brief live demo
Speak for around 20 minutes including brief live demo
Speak for around 20 minutes including brief live demo
Tests taken in paper and pencil and online. Test for skills and ability plus screening for special educational needs
If you’ve offered our paper tests in the past you may be familiar with some of these products and these covers
