At Ormiston Denes Academy, we believe all students should have the opportunity to succeed at the highest level. All aspects of our school life aim to inspire students to have aspirations and be ambitious. This is matched by a curriculum that is designed for all students to experience rigorous academic challenges, whilst enabling all our students to make positive life choices so they are healthy, polite and respectful.
Purpose of Assessment
Assessment is used to enable the following:
· Provide targeted feedback and development points against curriculum intentions and assessment,
· Measurement and tracking of student progress,
· Reporting to students, parents, school leadership teams and governors.
Curriculum Leaders will be responsible for ensuring GO4Schools mark books are set up in a manner that allows parents to easily note the topic covered and ascertain the corresponding assessment against the curriculum intentions for the period. Class teachers will be responsible for ensuring that regular assessment levels / grades are recorded on Go4Schools.
Formal Assessment Points
There are 3 data collection points a year. At each of these points, the academy will provide
· Raw assessment data which will provide a Current Grade.
· In Years 7 – 9, a Forecast Grade indicating where the teacher judgements and summative assessment suggest the student will progress to by the end of the academic year.
· In Year 10 – 11, a Forecast Level / Grade indicating where the teacher judgements and summative assessment suggest the student will progress to by the end of their GCSE course.
· Attitude to Learning Score.
Target Setting
Students will be set targets for individual subjects. In KS3, these targets will be for the end of each year and in KS4 it will be for the end of the GCSE course. These will be aspirational and challenging and has been created to ensure that it supports a rigorous, robust, measurable and transparent system of assessment.
Student Target Grade (Fischer Family Trust)
This is a centrally set, aspirational target grade that is stored for subject, class and student comparisons for all year groups. These are:
· Set at the start of Year 7.
· Reviewed each year by VP (Quality for Education) and Curriculum Leaders
· Currently follow FFT 20% for GCSE qualifications.
· Updated on Go4Schools by the Data Manager as close the beginning of the academic year as possible.
Pupils joining the school without prior attainment data:
Pupils will sit a range of GL Assessment upon entry and be given a current grade. This information will be used to set academic targets for these students.
Academic Reports
Reports will be issued to parents and students in the last week of each school term. Reports will include:
· Covering letter
· Target Setting Guide
· Report guidance
· Report detailing;
o Target Grade
o Current Grade
o Forecast Grade
o Attitude to Learning Score
o Attendance Percentage
o Reading Age data (Autumn Term only)
Parents are encouraged to go through the report carefully with their child, highlighting areas for improvement and considering action points for further progression. Where there is a corresponding parents evening this may be done with the support of class teachers.
At the beginning of every half term, students work with their form tutor to set academic targets in the planners to help them improve over the next half term. These action points will then be reviewed and adjusted through the next reporting cycle. At the academy, we follow a coloured coded system to help us identify those students who need further support and to celebrate and reward students who are doing well.
Feedback Policy
· All teachers check what pupils know and can do well enough and provide timely and relevant feedback during the lesson. Effective responsive and adaptive teaching requires an effective feedback process. Through this, gaps are identified in student learning or understanding, and students are provided with the next steps for improvement.
· Green Pen for metacognition: students will use green pen during their lessons to reflect on their work, develop in response to teacher feedback and correct errors. For example, marking answers as right or wrong, self/peer assessing according to a checklist, DIRT time.
· Live Feedback: teachers will use red pens in books while circulating to support student development. For example, developmental questions and corrections. Students respond to this in green.
· Pink Highlighter for Literacy: When circulating, teachers will use pink highlighters to support literacy development. For example, highlighting misspelled words, highlighting in the margin where sentences need reformulating, dots to seek out an error. Students respond in green.
· Summative and Formative assessments: Teachers will use red pens to offer feedback on formative or summative assessments. For example, WWW and EBI, written feedback on specific errors, whole-class feedback. Students will be responsible for acting on feedback in green.
· Practice makes permanent: feedback requires students to act. High-quality feedback at Denes is well-timed and gives students an appropriate task to show that they have improved.
· Appropriate feedback responses are focused on the task, subject or self-regulation strategies that make students successful.
The Assessment/Reporting Policy 24/25 can be viewed here.