Assessment – Life Without Levels

Why have things got to change? In 2014, the DfE announced that there would no longer be National Curriculum levels and that schools would have to set up their own way of assessing pupils.

What will assessment look like now? We will now be assessing pupils against the End of Year Expectations for their particular year group. We will be referring to these as Bands, so Year 1 will relate to Band 1, Year 2 will relate to Band 2 and so on. These match the new National Curriculum, introduced from September 2014.

Under the old levels system, children who were exceeding might have moved into the next level. The DfE now want children who are in the exceeding bracket to add more depth and breadth to their knowledge and have more opportunities to develop their using and applying skills linked to the objectives set for their particular year group. They are calling this phase of learning Mastery. Children will therefore largely remain within the band correlating to their year group for the entire academic year.

How will we report achievement to you this term? Your child’s class teacher will report one of the following for where your child is working at in relation to the band for their year group for reading, writing and maths: You will also be given targets for each of the subject areas to work on with your child Well below Below Just below Expected Above

How will we report achievement to you in the Spring and Summer terms? As we continue to make the transition from assessing using levels to bands this term we will build our bank of evidence in relation to your child’s point within the band. In the Spring term we will be reporting their achievement using more detail about their point within the band and the progress they have made.

There will be a further information session at the beginning of the Spring term to give you more information about this prior to the next parent’s evenings.