Assessment

Assessment should improve learning

At St Mary’s, assessment has one overriding purpose:

to help us understand what children know, what they can do and what they need to learn next.

Assessment is not something that happens only at the end of a term or before a report is written. It happens every day, in every classroom, as teachers listen to pupils, examine their work, ask questions, check understanding and respond to what they discover.

Good assessment helps teachers make better decisions.

It helps us answer three simple questions:

What has been learned?
What is not yet secure?
What do we need to do next?

Assessment is part of teaching

Our approach to teaching follows a clear learning sequence:

Retrieve → Connect → Model → Practise together → Practise independently → Check → Respond

Assessment runs throughout this process.

Before introducing new learning, teachers establish what pupils already know.

During teaching, they check whether pupils understand.

During practice, teachers identify misconceptions and provide feedback.

After teaching, they establish whether important knowledge has been retained and can be applied independently.

This means assessment does not simply measure learning.

Assessment shapes what happens next.

Checking for understanding

We do not want pupils to spend a lesson practising something incorrectly.

Teachers therefore check understanding frequently while learning is taking place.

This might include:

targeted questioning
whole-class response
pupil explanation
mini whiteboards
observation
retrieval questions
examination of pupils’ work
short quizzes
independent application
digital assessment and diagnostics
teacher and pupil conferencing

These approaches allow teachers to identify misconceptions quickly and decide whether to explain something again, provide another example, adapt their modelling, give further practice or move learning forward.

We check before we move on.

Helping children understand their own learning

Assessment also helps children become increasingly knowledgeable about themselves as learners.

From the Early Years onwards, pupils are taught to understand what they are learning and recognise what successful learning looks like.

As children mature, we expect them increasingly to:

Understand the purpose of their learning
What am I learning and how does this connect to what I already know?

Recognise success
What have I understood or become better at?

Respond to feedback
What do I need to change, practise or improve?

Recognise when something is difficult
What am I finding difficult and what help do I need?

Take increasing responsibility
What can I do independently to become more proficient?

This is not about asking children to make assessment judgements they are not yet equipped to make.

Teachers remain responsible for assessing learning.

Our aim is to develop pupils who can think intelligently about their learning and respond positively to feedback.

Feedback that makes a difference

Feedback matters when it changes what happens next.

It may be immediate and verbal. It may involve a teacher modelling something again, correcting a misconception, asking a pupil to improve part of their work or providing further practice.

Not every piece of work requires written feedback.

What matters is that teachers identify what pupils need and pupils have an opportunity to act upon it.

We want children to understand that excellent work is rarely produced immediately.

Learning involves practice, feedback, correction and improvement.

This forms part of our Ethic of Excellence across St Mary’s.

Deliberate practice

Becoming proficient requires more than encountering something once.

Children need opportunities to retrieve, practise and apply important knowledge and skills over time.

Our approach to deliberate practice teaches pupils that:

Purpose matters
Children should understand what they are practising and why.

There are no shortcuts to proficiency
Complex knowledge and skills require sustained effort.

Feedback matters
Misconceptions need to be identified and corrected before they become embedded.

Repetition matters
Important learning needs to be revisited until it becomes increasingly fluent and secure.

Assessment allows teachers and pupils to identify precisely where further practice is required.

Different types of assessment

We use different forms of assessment because they answer different questions.

Day-to-day formative assessment

This takes place continually within teaching.

It allows teachers to identify understanding and misconceptions while learning is happening and adapt teaching accordingly.

Retrieval and low-stakes assessment

Teachers regularly revisit previous learning to establish what pupils can remember.

This helps strengthen long-term memory while also showing teachers where knowledge has become less secure.

Diagnostic assessment

Diagnostic assessment helps us identify specific strengths, gaps and misconceptions.

Rather than simply producing a score, diagnostic information should tell us what needs attention next.

Summative assessment

At appropriate points during the year, pupils complete assessments which help teachers and leaders understand attainment and progress across a broader body of learning.

These assessments contribute to our overall understanding of a child.

No single test tells us everything we need to know about a pupil.

Teachers consider assessment information alongside pupils’ everyday work, classroom performance and their professional knowledge of the child.

PiXL and assessment

St Mary’s is a member of PiXL.

We use PiXL materials as one component of our assessment approach, particularly within Reading and Mathematics.

PiXL assessments help us identify patterns of strength and weakness and compare pupils’ performance against the knowledge and skills expected within the National Curriculum.

The important part comes afterwards.

Teachers and leaders analyse assessment information to identify:

knowledge that is secure
common misconceptions
pupils requiring further teaching
concepts requiring additional practice
areas where curriculum delivery may need strengthening

Assessment data is useful only when it results in intelligent action.

IXL: assessment that leads to practice

IXL provides another layer of diagnostic information within our assessment system.

Its diagnostics and curriculum-linked practice allow teachers to identify areas where individual pupils or groups require additional support.

Teachers use this information alongside their own assessment to select appropriate skills for further practice.

Children can then practise these skills both in school and at home.

This creates an important cycle:

Assess → Identify → Practise → Feedback → Reassess

Our aim is not for children simply to complete large numbers of online activities.

We want practice to be deliberate, appropriately challenging and connected to current learning.

Proficiency and mastery matter more than activity.

Assessment in Reading, Writing and Mathematics

Assessment looks different across subjects because different forms of knowledge require different approaches.

Reading

Teachers assess pupils’ fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and ability to understand increasingly complex texts.

Alongside everyday reading, pupils encounter unseen texts and assessment materials which require them to apply their reading knowledge independently.

Writing

Writing is assessed primarily through the work pupils produce over time.

Teachers consider whether children can independently apply the transcriptional, grammatical, compositional and authorial knowledge they have been taught.

Assessment should reflect what a pupil can genuinely produce rather than a heavily supported version of their writing.

Mathematics

Teachers assess fluency, conceptual understanding, reasoning and application.

Assessment includes questioning, retrieval, independent work, diagnostic activity and more formal assessments.

Where gaps are identified, pupils receive additional teaching and deliberate practice before being reassessed.

Assessment across the wider curriculum

Assessment is equally important in Science, History, Geography, Art, Computing, RE, Music, PE and the wider curriculum.

We are interested in whether children are building increasingly sophisticated knowledge over time.

Teachers use approaches including:

Retrieval
Can pupils remember important knowledge from previous lessons, units and year groups?

Questioning and discussion
Can pupils explain ideas using appropriate subject vocabulary?

Application
Can pupils use what they know in a new context?

Pupil work
Does the work demonstrate secure and increasingly sophisticated understanding?

Composite tasks
Can pupils draw together different components of their learning to demonstrate a broader understanding?

Assessment should reflect the nature of the subject.

We do not believe that everything valuable can or should be reduced to a numerical score.

Assessment in EYFS

Assessment begins in Nursery and Reception but looks appropriate to the age and development of our youngest children.

Adults build their understanding of children through interaction, observation, conversation and the learning children demonstrate through play and adult-directed activity.

Assessment helps practitioners identify children's developing knowledge, language, physical development and understanding.

It should support excellent interaction and teaching rather than unnecessarily remove adults from children in order to generate evidence.

From assessment to action

Collecting information is not enough.

Across St Mary’s, teachers and leaders regularly review assessment information and ask:

Who has understood this?
Who has not?
What misconception is getting in the way?
Is this an individual gap or a wider pattern?
Does something need teaching again?
Who needs additional practice?
Who is ready for greater challenge?

Teachers use these answers to adapt subsequent teaching, intervention and practice.

Leaders use them to evaluate the effectiveness of curriculum and teaching.

This is how assessment contributes directly to school improvement.

Reporting to parents and carers

Parents and carers are important partners in their child's learning.

Throughout the year, we provide opportunities to discuss:

what your child is doing well
how they are progressing through the curriculum
areas requiring further development
assessment information where appropriate
attendance and its impact on learning
how you can support learning at home

Written reports provide a broader summary of achievement and progress.

Where assessment identifies a concern, we do not believe parents should have to wait for a formal parents' evening to hear about it.

Similarly, when children make significant progress, we want families to understand and celebrate that success.

The principle is simple

Assessment at St Mary’s is not about generating more data.

It is about generating better decisions.

We assess so that teachers can teach more precisely, pupils can practise more deliberately and leaders can identify where our curriculum and teaching are having the greatest impact.

Ultimately, assessment should help every child answer:

What do I know?
What am I getting better at?
What do I need to work on next?

And it should help every teacher answer the most important question:

What does this child need from me next?