Primary Assessment Updates Autumn 2016

Assessment Team Robertson House SROB202 Six Hills Way Stevenage, Herts, SG1 2FQ

Tel: 01438 844863 F.A.O. The Headteacher, SLT Email: [email protected] and Assessment Leader Date: 3rd October 2016

Dear Colleague Primary Assessment Updates – Autumn 2016 This letter contains updates on a number of assessment-related matters. NB there are a lot of hyperlinks within this letter. Therefore you may find it easier to access this letter electronically online so that you can click on the hyperlinks directly. This letter can be found at www.thegrid.org.uk/learning/assessment/updates

Attainment on Entry (Nursery and Reception) As in previous years, we will collect attainment on entry data from schools, on a voluntary basis, for pupils beginning the Nursery and Reception years. Last year a very large proportion of schools and settings submitted this information, which meant it was possible for us to create a reasonably accurate picture of the overall Hertfordshire data and to provide benchmarking analysis to those schools that submitted data. Information regarding how to submit this data will be posted online by 17 th October, at http://bit.ly/hertsam7eyfs The deadline for submitting the data is Friday 21st October.

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Please note, the DfE has decided that the EYFSP will remain statutory this year. In other words, attainment at the end of the Reception year must be submitted using the EYFSP. We will inform schools of the deadline for this data submission in due course. The HfL Early Years team will as usual be running moderation clusters in the Summer term to support with assessment against the EYFSP.

Data Updates – RAISEonline, FFT Aspire, Herts Assessment Profile RAISEonline – we anticipate that 2016 results (EYFS, KS1, KS2 and Phonics) will be available in RAISEonline from 21st October. The design of the tables and charts in RAISEonline will look quite different this year for KS1 and KS2 data. The Assessment team is running training courses to support schools with interpreting and analysing RAISEonline – please see www.hertsforlearning.co.uk/booking for details.

of 5 Question Level Analysis (QLA) – as per last year, all KS2 tests were marked electronically. This has made it possible for QLA data to be automatically loaded into RAISEonline for every school, so that you can easily analyse the performance of your Year 6 children against the national average. For example, you can easily determine which topic areas or assessment focuses were answered best by your pupils, and which areas were the weakest, relative to the national picture. Or you can analyse the tests by individual mark point, to see if there are particular question types where your children did well or struggled. This can also be explored by gender. This information can be found simply by logging in to RAISEonline and clicking on the QLA Analysis tab. This information is available now for 2016 tests.

‘Fake’ RAISEonline emails and websites I would like to remind Headteachers once again that, if you have received emails from companies with email address domains such as raiseonline-training.co.uk or raiseonline.co.uk, these companies are not linked to the genuine team that produces RAISEonline. These emails are essentially marketing emails inviting you to book onto their training courses. Their websites may also be designed to look like the real RAISEonline site. Please don’t be fooled. At best, these companies are just sending spam to try to entice you onto their courses. At worst, they could be ‘phishing’ for your log-in information. The genuine RAISEonline website is www.raiseonline.org. The genuine RAISEonline team do not run any training courses. Updates about developments to RAISEonline are all freely available from the ‘Latest News’ part of the RAISEonline homepage, and detailed documents about how the data are analysed are available in the RAISEonline Library area. We think you will find that the RAISEonline training run by Herts for Learning is better value for money than the sessions offered by these other companies.

Hertfordshire Assessment Profile (previously known as MIU or PIU Profile) – the first version of this, using the unvalidated 2016 data, was released earlier this term. A new version is now available, which corrects some minor glitches. The latest version can be downloaded from the grid at: www.thegrid.org.uk/info/edcs The Profile includes data for individual schools, for Hertfordshire and, where available, national results. The benchmarking area of the tool also allows you to explore your results by district. KS1 and KS2 data in the Profile shows 2016 results only. To see results from previous years, please download the 2015 version of the Profile, which is still available at the above address.

FFT Aspire – KS2 data has already been updated in FFT Aspire and subscribing schools can download the KS2 ‘Governor Dashboard’ document. KS1 data will be updated shortly.

of 5 Statutory Assessment – KS1 and KS2 2017 Interim Teacher Assessment Frameworks (‘ITAFs’) have been issued for this academic year for KS1 and KS2. These are almost identical to the document used last year. The documents, and exemplification of standards, can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/key-stage-1-teacher-assessment and https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/key-stage-2-teacher-assessment

Our advice to teachers in Year 2 and Year 6 is that, whilst the ‘ITAFs’ are not designed for ongoing tracking of pupil progress throughout the year, it is advisable to be mindful of the essential requirements of the ‘Expected Standards’ so that you can plan learning opportunities appropriately and best enable pupils to reach the standards. However, the curriculum should not be narrowed down to only focus on those elements contained within the ITAFs. The assessment criteria produced by Herts for Learning better reflect the breadth and depth of the curriculum.

Teachers in Year 2 and Year 6 (and potentially Year 5 too) may find our ‘Journey to the ITAFs’ courses useful, to consider ways of using the ITAFS to best prepare children to meet the expected standards. These courses are running on November 7th (KS2) and November 19th (KS1). NB there will be some overlap in the content of these courses and that of the ‘New to Y2’ and ‘New to Y6’ courses which ran earlier this term.

At this stage we cannot advise about dates for submission of statutory teacher assessment, as these have not yet been confirmed by DFE.

Moderators at KS1 and KS2 – we are on the look-out for confident practitioners with excellent knowledge and understanding of making secure assessment judgements at either Y2 or Y6 to join our team of moderators. If Headteachers would like to recommend a member of their staff who they think would make a good moderator at either Key Stage, and who is interested in the role, please contact us to discuss this further.

Analysis of the HfL assessment system in relation to national standards (2016) Many thanks to all the schools that submitted end of year assessment data for children in Year 6, showing both the assessments made using the HfL system and the results from 2016 SATs. This has enabled us to carry out some detailed comparisons of results and explore patterns and trends. A more detailed document outlining our findings will shortly be available within PA Plus (in the subscription area of the Herts for Learning website):

of 5 www.hertsforlearning.co.uk/group/primary-core-teaching-learning-and-assessment- resources However a brief summary of our findings is as follows: Attainment – the data would suggest that our original view of the standards was correct, i.e. that A4 should be considered to be “broadly within age-related expectations” at the end of Year 2 and likewise C4 should be seen as “broadly within age-related expectations” at the end of Year 6. We had indicated at an earlier stage last year that children working within the C3 step might reach the expected standard in the KS2 tests – and indeed it transpires that about half of such children did. However, for a more robust view of who is “on track” we advise sticking with the original notion that those children whose attainment lies in the amber cell of the distribution grids are in a far better place to be on track to meet the expected standards at the end of the Key Stages. Progress – the data suggests that we were correct in our positioning of the ‘minimum sufficient progress’, ‘good progress’ and ‘very strong progress’ cells on the Expected Progress Grids. On average:  pupils who had made 11 steps of progress across KS2 (‘minimum sufficient’) had KS2 progress scores that were slightly below zero, but greater than -1 (not statistically significantly below average, i.e. ‘broadly average’)  pupils who had made 12 steps of progress across KS2 (‘good’) had positive KS2 progress scores of greater than +1  pupils who had made 13 steps of progress across KS2 (‘very strong’) had positive KS2 progress scores of greater than +3 and therefore likely to be statistically significantly positive

Having reflected on the standards in this year’s tests and the scores needed to achieve “expected standards”, we are delighted to be able to say that we strongly feel that the materials and advice produced by HfL to support schools with teaching and assessment in the new curriculum were absolutely in line with national standards. We hope that all our subscribers will agree that these resources put you in the best place possible to know how to help pupils achieve and to know how best to target support.

We will be continuing to develop our resources over the coming year, responding to your needs as much as possible. There will be a scheduled update to the reports in late October. This will comprise a number of enhancements, including measuring progress across KS2 for the current Year 3 children from their Summer Year 2 assessment using the HfL steps. Guidance will be provided to help with this.

of 5 Forthcoming opportunities I would like to finish by bringing to your attention a number of opportunities for training and professional development. Over the past year, a number of teachers from Hertfordshire schools have been working with Shirley Clarke to develop formative assessment in their schools, as part of the 3-day action research course. Thursday 24th November, 1pm-4pm, sees the culmination of this project with the Showcase afternoon. We invite you to come and hear Shirley speak, followed by presentations made by the Hertfordshire teachers about the impact of their action research. Please book your place in the usual way. Further details at: http://booking.hertsforlearning.co.uk/actweb/WDC/sseo/template_001.cfm? pageID=5&template=courseDetails&courseID=16ASS/055A&eventCode=16ASS/055A

There is also a wide range of assessment course on aspects of formative assessment, such as marking and feedback, and courses on making effective use of data such as RAISEonline and FFT.

Moderation clusters – as usual we will be putting on a range of opportunities for teachers to work together and moderate their assessment judgements, starting with Year 3/Year 4 clusters just after half-term. Information on these will be arriving in schools very shortly. Moderation clusters for Year 1/2 and Year 5/6 will take place in the Spring term.

I hope you have found the information in this letter to be useful. We aim to keep schools updated on key assessment matters via the schools bulletin, our updates page on the grid (www.thegrid.org.uk/learning/assessment/updates) and via twitter (@hertsassessment).

If you have any queries about any of the contents of this letter, or require any support, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely

Ben Fuller Lead Assessment Adviser, Herts for Learning Ltd.