Assessment and Outcomes

Assessment – how do you know your child is making good progress?

In September 2014, the government introduced a new National Curriculum and with it the former national curriculum assessment levels were removed leaving schools free to choose their own methods of tracking children’s progress and attainment. There is now no national requirement from the government in how schools should assess and record progress. It is therefore up to each school to develop its own system.

In the new National Curriculum, there is a much greater emphasis on ensuring that children have a solid understanding of what they are learning rather than the old ‘race to the top’ approach which aimed to get children to achieve as high a level as possible as quickly as possible.

At Wibsey Primary School the assessment format that we use allows teachers to assess pupils’ learning against the statutory learning objectives for each year group. For each age group (Years 1 to 6) there are six age-related steps that pupils progress across over the course of the academic year.

What does this mean for you?

Rather than sharing the old levels we will share with you the step that your child is currently working on and whether they are on track to reach their end of year expectation. Under the new National Curriculum pupils must only work on objectives for their year group and are not taught skills from a higher year group. For all pupils learning is deepened and broadened by providing a range of learning opportunities that offer a greater depth and breadth of understanding specific to their year group.

Within each year group there are six steps and children work through these steps as they deepen their understanding of the key concepts and skills. Pupils move from ‘beginning’ to ‘working at’ and then ‘secure’ within each subject. For example if your child is in Year 3 they may be assessed at 3w+. This does not equate to the old level 3, but the 3 refers to year 3 and the ‘w+’ to Working Plus.

At Wibsey Primary School we hold high expectations for our children and we know that you do too, At the end of each school year, our expectation is that children will be on the ‘working plus’ step which indicates that they have reached an age-related expectation of attainment.

Whilst expected progress over the course of the academic year for each child is 6 steps there is no expectation that children necessarily progress at one step per term as all children progress at different rates.