Assessment at Redhill is purposeful and gives an insight into pupils' knowledge and understanding, allowing teachers to set realistic, yet challenging targets. Assessment is carried out daily through formative methods and also summative to provide clear information on knowledge, skills, key concepts and also the application of these. Assessment may look very different from one child to the next as all children have different starting places and learning styles.The changes to the national curriculum and the assessment of its impact go well beyond mere changes of content. They invoke very different day to day approaches to assessment and signal fundamental shifts in ideas about learning and assessment. The sub levels have now been removed and the new curriculum is founded on the principle that teachers should ensure that the pupils have a secure understanding of key ideas and concepts before moving onto the next phase.
The three main forms of assessment at Redhill are: 1. Formative assessment- used by teachers to evaluate pupils' knowledge and understanding on a day to day basis and to tailor teaching accordingly. This can include, probing questions, quick recap questions, scrutiny of work and formal tests.2. Summative assessment- enables schools to evaluate how much a pupil has learned at the end of a teaching period.3. Nationally standardised summative assessments- used by the government to hold schools to account.
As part of the formative assessment, teachers use their knowledge of what the child can do to support planning of future teaching. Books are looked at and next steps are considered. Teachers also use publications that we have bought to identify where there are strengths within an individual/groups/cohorts understanding and establish what the areas for development are. At the end of each term summative assessments are used to add to the teacher's assessment of the children. These assessments allow teachers to identify progress and also plan further work.National assessments happen in the autumn for reception pupils and in the summer term for all other pupils. These assessments are carried out with children in reception, year 1, year 4 and year 6. Reception children complete the baseline assessment in the first 6 weeks of starting at Redhill. It is a short, activity-based assessment of pupils' starting points in:* language, communication and literacy * mathematics After the assessments have taken place, teachers receive a series of short, narrative statements that tell them how children performed in the assessment. These are used to inform teaching within the first term. The data will only be used at the end of year 6 to form the school-level progress measure.
Year 1 children all undergo a phonics screen in June. Each child will sit with their teacher in a quiet place and be assessed on their application of phonics knowledge. The children are expected to read a range of real and nonsense words which include phonics that they have been taught. Year 4 children sit an on-screen multiplication test where they are asked 25 times table questions and are given 6 seconds to answer each question. There is no pass mark for the multiplication tables check. The purpose of the check is to help to identify any children who may need additional support with their times tables.
Year 6 children will take part in KS2 SATs during one week in May which is pre-determined by the government. Children complete tests in grammar, punctuation and spelling, reading and mathematics. The grammar, punctuation and spelling tests consist of two papers: one focussing on testing children's application of grammar and punctuation and the other on spelling words dictated to them. The reading paper tests the children's ability to answer a range of comprehension questions based on three texts of varying difficulty and length. There are three papers for the children to complete in mathematics: an arithmetic paper, testing children on calculations involving the four operations; and two reasoning papers, which test the children on their ability to answer varied, multi-step questions that require them to apply their mathematical reasoning skills. The results of these tests are published in July and parents receive them, alongside a teacher assessment in writing and science, in their child's end of year report.