St Michael's Assessment Statement
At St Michael’s School we believe assessment is at the heart of teaching and learning. Teachers, parents and children work together to understand each child’s particular knowledge, skills and needs to ensure continuous improvement and to allow every child to achieve their full potential.
o Assessment drives improvement for pupils and teachers.
o Assessment provides reliable information for parents to know how their child, and the school as a whole, is doing.
o Assessment is linked with best practice and innovation external to the school
- Assessment is fundamental to improvement
o Teachers need to know a child’s starting point: this allows them to plan work effectively, build on prior learning, and challenge children to achieve as highly as possible. This is formative assessment.
o Effective assessment is an essential aspect of good and outstanding teaching. Throughout a lesson the teacher should be carrying out continuous assessment which will help guide the next steps for the learning.
o Feedback to pupils contributes to improved learning and is focused on specific and tangible objectives.
o Assessment should also produce recordable measures which can demonstrate comparison against expected standards and reflect progress over time.
o Assessment allows the school to know how well it is doing and what to focus on for further and continuous improvement.
- Assessment provides reliable and important information for parents (summative assessment)
o Assessment should be well-rounded, taking in core areas of the curriculum, but extending beyond to take in the whole child.
o Assessment will allow meaningful tracking of pupils towards the end of key stage expectations in the new curriculum which will be regularly shared with parents.
o Assessment will allow parents and the school to identify children who are either falling behind or excelling, which will facilitate necessary action.
o Assessment will be reliable and free from bias. We will moderate our assessment against local and national standards.
- Assessment is informed by, and linked to, best practice.
o Assessment allows us to compare ourselves with other schools both locally and nationally.
o Assessment should be manageable for teachers, learners and parents.
o Assessment will be created using both local and national models and systems, including teacher assessment
For further details on our assessment processes, please click on the links below. You will find specific details of how we assess across the curriculum an every year group. If there is anything you are not sure about, please contact one of the Assistant Headteachers at the school.