Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Moderation / Levelling

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Why Moderate Levels?  To improve teaching, learning and assessment  To engage in discussion  To develop a shared understanding  To achieve accuracy and consistency  To aid monitoring of the curriculum  To provide exemplification  To provide consistency of assessment to plan appropriate next steps  To further the development of partnerships between special and mainstream agencies using a common language  To enable staff to share expertise about teaching methods

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Considerations for Moderation  Who moderates?  What to moderate?  When to carry out moderation?  Use of neutral materials  Importance of annotation  Materials for exemplification?

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Levelling (making judgements)  When levelling a piece of evidence of attainment, the level only refers specifically to that evidence and not necessarily overall attainment of the child.  It is a good experience to attempt to level evidence that has been unclearly annotated. (A range of examples are provided that have been difficult to level and others that are more straightforward.)  It is not a precise judgement, but one that identifies a ‘best fit’ level. It may be likely that pupils demonstrate elements from across 2 or 3 levels. It is the one with a cluster of elements that represents the ‘best fit’ level.  When making judgements about the ‘overall attainment of a child’, judgements should be based on a range of evidence, and from discussion with others when possible.  It is important to understand the terminology used within the ‘P Scales’, particularly P1- P3. See handout 2.

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Understanding and Using Terminology For example -  Independently  Intentional actions + intentional communication  Coactively – substantial help from an adult  Proactively – child acts independently and with intentionality

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Levels / progression etc Activity  Levelling within NC levels  Levelling within P levels

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales The Process of Moderation  Teacher Assessment  Observation (not just teachers) is a key form of evidence when accompanied by annotation.  A range of evidence  Evidence can be an example of more than one strand  Examples should be representative of the pupil’s ability  ICT should be considered for collecting evidence e.g. recording language.  Evidence is best collected over time, in a range of contexts and in different forms What is the evidence to be collected?

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Annotations Good annotations alongside evidence are a crucial part of the process of making judgements within levelling and moderation.

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales  An assessment opportunityopportunity  Observation SchedulesSchedules  Completing a Moderation Proforma Proforma  A Completed ExampleExample

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Guidance:  Descriptions should be specific about the response to task not a list of level descriptors (see example )  A clear, brief description of task and response is necessary.  The description of what the pupil did can be on the evidence itself or on the covering sheet.  The description should say exactly what the adult and child did, including questions and answers around a piece of evidence, particularly those that demonstrate thought processes.  Avoid terminology such as ‘co-active’, ‘verbal support’, ‘with prompts’ etc.

Derbyshire County Council Children and Younger Adults Department ‘P’ Scales Resources for Moderation  Evidence  Up to date P Scales  A group of people