How to sail securely for land in very choppy waters
Serial lockdowns and class bubbles have made assessing academic performance and student wellbeing throughout KS3 particularly challenging this year. Headteachers Andy Daly and Lee Walker reveal how their schools are using standardised assessment to help their colleagues and students through what has proved to be a very ‘long transition’
Key Stage 3 is often problematic, sandwiched as students are between high-stakes assessments in the years immediately before and afterwards. But for this year’s cohort who will start GCSEs in September, it’s been especially challenging because most haven’t been in school full time since Year 7. For most students in KS3, their secondary school career has been spent out of school, in front of a screen, and socially restricted.
This unusual state of affairs means that, however good a school has been at delivering remote learning, consistent assessment of academic performance and student wellbeing has been challenging to say the least. Last year’s transition was difficult, and this year’s promises to be no less so. What then should schools do to help students and teachers through this ‘long transition’?
External benchmarking
“If schools want to make sure that students perform in line with their potential, then an assessment like GL Assessment’s Progress Test Series can be of real value,” says Andy Daly, Executive Headteacher at Cambridge Meridian Academies Trust who oversees transition and assessment arrangements for three secondaries.
“Progress Test data is really useful because it’s standardised against national benchmarks and it’s longitudinal, so you can see students across Key Stage 3 who have dropped back at an individual level, and the cohorts and schools where there might be questions about whether they are or aren’t progressing at a Trust level.”
Lee Walker, Headteacher at King Edward VI School in Bury St Edmunds, says a robust standardised assessment should be able to demonstrate specific strengths and areas for development for each student. “Teaching staff can use the results of the assessments to plan for effective learning in their classrooms, and subject leaders will find the information beneficial in helping them develop appropriate assessments which are linked to the curriculum in their subject.”
Lee also reminds schools not to neglect the motivational power of assessments on the students themselves. “When students are finding particular concepts hard to grasp, teachers can refer to their earlier successes in standardised tests to remind students of the potential they have demonstrated and how this links with the subject matter they are currently finding more challenging. Helping students believe they can be successful with perseverance is crucial.”
Triangulation helps
Triangulation with other datasets also helps, Andy adds, because it can give a more accurate picture of where a student’s academic potential or barriers to learning may be. Internal assessments have their place and are often necessary in subjects outside the core disciplines, Andy says. However, he warns that they are always prone to subjectivity and will benefit from an objective metric as a comparator. “CAT4 and the Progress Test Series, for example, not only help us establish a baseline but also allow us to benchmark our own assessments.”
A case in point, Andy says, has been the Trust’s experience with Teacher Assessed Grades. “Stressful though TAGs have been, it’s really useful to have had CAT4 and Progress Test data as a common benchmarked baseline established across the Trust. We were able to demonstrate that 1,300 students in our Year 11 cohort, for instance, are broadly in line and comparable to the national picture in terms of setting boundaries. This has been statistically reassuring.”
‘On mute’ but back in school
Both headteachers report similar findings when it comes to student wellbeing post lockdown. Students have proven remarkably resilient they say, often more resilient than adults, but both are concerned that the pandemic has affected some students deeply and that the long-term effects for a few could be long lasting.
“Most students have coped remarkably well,” says Lee. “But some were still ‘on mute’ when they came back into school. Long periods of time at a computer meant they had got out of the habit of talking to each other or their teachers, so it’s taken a bit of time for them to get used to normal school routine.”
Lee says the situation is improving and the insights from GL Assessment’s Pupil Attitudes to Self and School (PASS) measure will help staff gauge the attitudes of students coming to the school for the first time this September.
Teaching up not down
Andy says the picture at his schools is also very mixed. “Some children are absolutely fine, they’re really resilient and my colleagues and I are very aware that we have to be careful not to project any understandable anxiety we may feel as adults onto our children. Attendance tells another story though in terms of the impact on some small groups of students and, for obvious reasons, it is extremely hard to challenge this at the moment. It’s tricky.”
Andy is also aware that, however dislocating serial lockdowns have been for students, we shouldn’t teach down to them. “We’ve got to be careful not to dumb down, we can’t let this setback to their education become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he warns. “We have to ask, ‘Is the level of challenge where it should be at this stage in their education?’
“As teachers, we have to get back to where we would normally teach, what we would normally teach and at the standard we would normally teach as quickly as possible,” he says. “We should scaffold up to that point rather than dumb down and make it up later. And to be honest, there is bound to be a bit of a concern in that we’re pitching lessons at the right level.”
Lee agrees that teachers should set lessons at the appropriate and expected level. “Staff are well aware and understand that they have to get children out of their shells and that they have to cover material to ensure it fits in with the curriculum journey.” He also makes the point that his school and others have been asking an awful lot of their colleagues.
“Staff have been remarkably resilient – some have had to isolate, or had half the class isolating, or had to switch between delivering classes remotely and in person. There’s been an enormous amount of pressure and a lot of new terrain to explore – but staff have responded magnificently.”
Lee’s assessment tips for the year ahead
- Be clear
Know what you want to assess and when and how it fits with the curriculum - Keep it simple
Ensure that assessment is timely, aligned to your curriculum intent and to key objectives in each subject - Consider how to maximise the long-term impact for students of the feedback you provide following any assessment
- Use standardised external assessments to understand the potential of each child more clearly
- Use the data over time
To measure progress, identify unexpected changes in performance, and demonstrate the impact of your curriculum and teaching