Reassessing assessment

WOOO WOOOOOO all aboard the 'Assessment without levels' juggernaut!

So, this time last lear the time had finally come for my school to take its first steps on the journey that is redefining assessment in a life after levels.

And what an exciting trip it's proven to be. Because, once you get over the terrifying, often chaotic, smorgasboard of options available to you, and get your head around the appallingly fragmented nature of attempting to compare progress of cohorts across differing specs, schools, key stages, LAs, systems, you'll realise we're actually in a PRETTY POWERFUL position.

For once the decision-making is in our hands: we are redefining assessment in a way that works in our schools and for our students.

Of course, all of this should be prefaced with the fact that I am a very lucky teacher.

I'm lucky that my school decided the way ahead was to set up a working party of interested teachers to consider what might work best for us, rather than making top-down decisions. 

I'm also lucky that at that working party, with just weeks of the summer term left, our brave Senior AHT decided to listen to the enthusiastic voices of the Faculty leaders for English and Maths (@mr_g_walton) and gave us permission to go ahead with a September launch, piloting an assessment model ahead of a school-wide launch in September 2016. 

Mostly, I'm lucky for the team work and quiet wisdom of my superb DHoF (@miss_s_fry) and the skill and enthusiasm of our team for taking on a new approach whilst also grappling with new GCSE and A Level specifications.

In the rest of this post you'll find an attempt to quantify what we did, why we did it, and what happens next. I've done a stack of reading around the topic and apologise if I've unwittingly failed to credit any ideas from others. I will say in advance that I'm 100% indebted to the magnificent Freya Odell @fod3 for sharing her own new KS3 assessment criteria and giving me a much needed starting point for our own and the 'Growth and Thresholds' work of Shaun Allison @shaunallison on which our whole  school approach is built. 

What did we set out to do?

1. Rather than seeking to reinvent the wheel, we wanted to make sure we used best practice from other schools further on in their AwL journey. As already stated, our starting point was primarily the ‘Thresholds and Growth’ model developed by Shaun Allison, but I was also interested by the way in which the likes of Alex Quigley (@HuntingEnglish) mapped back from the skills students need to study English at A Level and beyond.

2. We wanted to ensure that clearly communicating to students what they needed to do in the classroom to improve was at the core of our new assessment model. We also wanted to make this easier for teachers, doing away with superfluous assessment folders, APP grids, cover sheets etc. Basically, we wanted to do less better. 

3. We wanted to focus on achievement in relation to students’ end of KS2 starting points, showing that we valued the progress of ALL students, in order to foster a growth mindset and to encourage students to value their own progress. Early on we realised that this necessitated rejection of purely age-related expectations which weren't going to be appropriate for our wonderfully varied intake and that felt unhelpful for students with SEN.

4. We wanted to create assessment objectives that more effectively prepared students for the increased challenge of all the new GCSE/A Level courses. Again, we also felt that intuitively we could reduce the number of AFs to create something more easily communicated and understood.

5. We wanted to more effectively track student achievement in different aspects of English so we could more effectively target our interventions to address underachievement. This is one we've returned to: 'do not collect data if you're not going to do anything with it' I now have tattooed on my soul.

What did we then do as a result?

We took a good hard look at book marking and decided that what helps students improve is high quality verbal and written feedback - not an often arbitrary number. We therefore decided all formative work would simply state:

ATL = Attitude to learning

WWW = What went well

EBI = Even better if

We then decided we still needed a standardised way of knowing if students were making good progress. We decided to do this by staying with our model of termly assessments. These needed to be marked and so we set about developing our own AOs and assessment criteria.

We did this by using A Level and GCSE assessment objectives to boil down achievement in English to its base elements. For example, reading has six AOs:

A Level	Lit AO5: Explore literary texts informed by different interpretations.	Lit AO2: Analyse ways in which meanings are shaped in literary texts. Lang AO2: Demonstrate critical understanding of concepts and issues relevant to language use. Lang AO1: Apply appropriate methods of language analysis, using associated terminology		Lit AO1: Articulate informed, personal and creative responses to literary texts, using associated concepts and terminology	Lit AO4: Explore connections across literary texts. Lang AO4: Explore connections across texts, informed by linguistic concepts and methods.	Lit AO3: Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received. Lang AO3: Analyse and evaluate how contextual factors and language features are associated with the construction of meaning.
GCSE	AO1 Identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and ideas. Selects and synthesises evidence from different texts.	AO2 Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use language to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject terminology	AO2 Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use structure to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject terminology	AO4 Evaluate texts critically and support this with appropriate textual references.	AO3 Compare writers’ ideas and perspectives, as well as how these are conveyed, across two or more texts.	AO3 Considering the significance of context
KS3	Reading for meaning	Analysis of language	Analysis of structure	Personal, critical response	Comparison	Understanding of context

We used the top of the GCSE mark scheme to create a bench mark of excellence for students at KS3. From there, we considered the achievement benchmarks we would expect them to meet as they stepped towards this.

A Level	Lit AO5: Explore literary texts informed by different interpretations.
GCSE	AO1 Identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and ideas. Selects and synthesises evidence from different texts.
KS3	Reading for meaning
Step 7	There is a well-structured, conceptualised argument in response to the task with perceptive exploration of explicit and implicit meanings. There is synthesis of evidence from across the text/s with judicious use of precise quotation to support interpretations.
Step 6	There is sustained and developed response to the task which expresses thoughtful ideas about explicit and implicit meanings. Apt quotations are increasingly integrated into interpretations.
Step 5	There is a detailed response to the task which shows detailed understanding. A range of inferences have been made. There is effective use of a range of quotations to support the ideas expressed.
Step 4	There is an explained response to the task which shows clear understanding. At least one clear inference has been made. A range of relevant quotations have been selected and commented; comments are securely rooted in the text.
Step 3	There is an explained response to the task which shows understanding of the extract and the whole text. There is an attempt to infer/interpret information. Relevant quotations have been selected and commented on. However, the comments are not always accurate or securely rooted in the text.
Step 2	There is a supported response to the text and task which shows understanding of the extract and/or the whole text. There is at least one reference to the whole text. There is selection of, mostly relevant, quotations to support comments.
Step 1	Simple comments are made which show some understanding of the text, which may be an extract e.g. accuracy when responding to true or false statements. There is an attempt to select relevant quotations e.g. use of paraphrase when responding to a ‘List 4 things…’ task.
Step 0	There is little or no understanding of what has been read even when responding to simple texts or extracts. If there is any textual reference then it is irrelevant or inaccurate.

We allocated each child invisible pathway based on whether their end of KS2 attainment was low, middle or high using the same criteria as RAISE online:

Low = below Level 4

Middle = at Level 4

High = above Level 4

We then judged what would be expected progress for a child with each of these starting points and mapped a nominal pathway for them.

	Step 0	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4	Step 5	Step 6	Step 7
Low	Year 7 below	Year 7 expected	Year 7 good	Year 7 exceptional
Middle		Year 7 below	Year 7 expected	Year 7 good	Year 7 exceptional
High			Year 7 below	Year 7 expected	Year 7 good	Year 7 exceptional
Low		Year 8 below	Year 8 expected	Year 8 good	Year 8 exceptional
Middle			Year 8 below	Year 8 expected	Year 8 good	Year 8 exceptional
High				Year 8 below	Year 8 expected	Year 8 good	Year 8 exceptional
Low			Year 9 below	Year 9 expected	Year 9 good	Year 9 exceptional
Middle				Year 9 below	Year 9 expected	Year 9 good	Year 9 exceptional
High					Year 9 below	Year 9expected	Year 9 good	Year 9 exceptional

The new KS3 assessment objectives are mapped across the curriculum in Years 7-9 to ensure they are appropriately interleaved and that they build cumulatively.

The formal assessments are marked against a mark scheme generated by the DHoF from our master grid of assessment criteria - this ain't no APP grid!

After each of the formal assessments, teachers enter their marks onto a tracking document which then generates a progress outcome for each child. This gives the HoF/DHoF a live overview of the strengths/weaknesses of every child in the cohort, but also flags up students who aren't yet making expected progress so that appropriate interventions can be put in place.

What happens next?

Inspired initially by the outcome of the DfE workload reports, formal assessments are going termly rather than half-termly. This will halve data entry for teachers, but will also benefit students by allowing greater flexibility in curriculum delivery and building revision skills vital for a 100% exam GCSE course. I am hopeful it'll also support Faculty leaders to ensure that all data gathered is acted upon. 

We've also amended the wording of the assessment criteria for clarity and to make it more succinct (on reflection, 'variety of' is about as woolly as a sheep's coat). 

But, other than that, we're feeling pleased that the system we've ended up works for us, our students, and our wider school community. The emphasis really is on the learning, progress judgements are used as a marker on a journey and not a stick to beat students with, and there's finally a way of creating consistently high expectations for all students regardless of their starting point.

Surely that deserves a second WOO!