Curriculum

Assessment (KeyStage 1 and 2)

Assessment by teachers is ‘ ..The purposeful, systematic and ongoing
collection of information as evidence for use in making judgments about student learning..’

Reporting is an integral part of the school’s teaching and learning process, which communicates student learning in the prescribed areas to parents. The process reflects the principles of:

•   Continuous assessment
•   International benchmarking
•   Independent and Collaborative learning tasks completed in class and progress reflected over time
•   The application of skills and knowledge across the learning areas to provide a meaningful learning environment.
•   An indication of Personal and Social development that contributes to student learning and development of desired behaviours
•   Self- assessment and goal setting

The main purpose of reporting is to provide parents with relevant information on their child’s progress towards the expected levels of achievement and where they need to improve.This information comes from standardised testing and class based assessments, combined with the teacher’s professional judgement.

As part of our journey of growth and development, it was decided to change the current report format in order to provide more meaningful information to parents. This will also bring the reporting process into line with current teaching methods, UK recommendations and accreditation requirements.
Early Years Portfolios contain ‘pieces of evidence.’ The more relevant the evidence, the more useful it is for inferring a student’s level of achievement in a learning area.”

At St. Michaels there are three types of assessment each with a different purpose.

The most frequent is the on-going, in-class assessment which is completed daily by the class teacher and relates to how well the students are obtaining the current teaching. These 'assessments for learning' dictate the pace of subsequent lessons, the level of support each child receives in this learning and are collated to form the majority of the report grade. In the Nursery and Reception class, this is the only form of assessment and is comprised through a schedule of continous observations of the students against the UK Early Learning goals.

In addition, the majority of the school also completes a series of 'assessments of learning' towards the end of each term, in which the key skills for Literacy, Numeracy and Science are assessed in a more formal setting. Through the use of an online system, the student's understanding of the content taught during that term are briefly assessed and levelled. The collation of these levels allows the class teacher to prioritise the following term's teaching and enables the school to identify those children needing Learning Enrichment.

Finally, in the spring of each academic year, the student in Years 4 to 6 complete a series of external examinations in the form of the International Student Assessments (ISA)These are internationally benchmarked assessments of Reading, Writing and Mathematical Literacy completed by thousands of students across the globe. These enable the school to ensure that our academic program is delivering an internationally high standard of education and helps direct future programmes and resources.