Assessment & Exams

Assessment is important…
‘So that sta­ff know how much students know, remember and can do and as a result adapt their teaching (and curriculum) to ensure their students are making progress through the curriculum.’ Progress means knowing more (including knowing how to do more) and remembering more.
We have three main forms of assessment we use at Crown Hills which are given below on order of frequency from highest to lowest:
• Formative Assessment
• Whole Class Feedback tasks
• Summative Assessments

Formative Assessment
Teachers at Crown Hills rely mostly on frequent, low stakes, formative assessment as part of responsive teaching, as the main form of assessment within the classroom. Teachers understand the greater impact formative assessment has on students learning and their ability to know, understand and do more within their subject. This is due to the real-time feedback formative assessment provides, for teachers with planning and next steps as well as for the students themselves. This relates to the checking for understanding pillar and responsive teaching on the teaching and learning temple.

Whole Class Feedback
These tasks are planned intentionally within the curriculum to allow teachers to monitor progress more formally. These tasks are designed to ‘tell’ the teacher and student something meaningful in terms of how well students’ knowledge has been retained and applied. Whole class feedback marking procedures are applied to support teacher workload. There are no more than three completed per year group.

These tasks:
• require the retrieval of what students have been taught in previous lessons
• involve engagement with previously practiced procedural knowledge e.g. drills, skills
• require the students demonstrating knowledge e.g. answering questions without cues or prompts

Summative Assessments
These happen once per year for each year group at KS3. They occur within a 2-week window as outlined below:
Year 9 (Spring Term1)
Year 8 (Spring Term 2)
Year 7 (Spring Term 2)

Purpose of Summative Assessments
Assessment is robust, valid and reliable and aligns with the curriculum in being effective and efficient. Summative assessments are planned intentionally throughout the 5-year curriculum to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate what they know and understand about a subject domain as well as what they can remember over a sustained period of time. In addition, at Key Stage 3 (KS3) they support students to be the best they can be as they get direct experience of assessments under controlled conditions which helps prepare them for the public examinations they sit at the end of KS4. At Crown Hills we believe that the quality and delivery of the curriculum is ‘king’ and that it is the depth and breadth of what we teach that is most important, as this will prepare our students to be successful and ready to take on the world. Summative inferences allow faculties to evaluate the curriculum.

1. Subject specific – we recognise that the progression model for each subject is different therefore assessments will look different across subjects. The assessments are closely linked
   to the curriculum and so assess key knowledge / threshold concepts. In addition, the curriculum dictates the timing of assessment at Key Stage 3 (KS3) so may be at a different point across the year for different subjects.
   2. Infrequent – pupils need time to improve on the knowledge taught. This is where formative assessment (as part of responsive teaching) supports student performance in summative
   assessments. Faculties do not assess more than three times at KS3 (once in Year 7,8 and 9) and twice at KS4 (through centrally planned mock examinations/formal assessments).
   3. Distinguish between pupils – the content of the assessment (questions / tasks / performance) increases in difficulty and are accessible to all. All students sit the same assessment.
   4. Sample from a large domain – the infrequency also ensures the assessments sample from a large enough domain. In Year 7, students are not assessed in this way until term 3 to ensure enough of the curriculum has been taught.
   5. Cumulative – this supports the idea that the knowledge students learn in Year 7 is equally as important as the knowledge they learn in Year 11 and they build on their knowledge as they progress through the curriculum. E.g., an assessment in Year 9 may include some of the curriculum from Year 7.
   6. Taken under controlled conditions – this ensures the data from these assessments is reliable and comparable as well as providing students with this experience.
   7. Shared meaning – this allows for comparison of the results and for inferences to be made. Summative inferences support evaluation of the effectiveness of the curriculum, teaching as well as student progress across a subject