2015-2016 Assessment

Reception Baseline Test

A new baseline assessment will be introduced from September 2015 for our reception children.

This will be used to find how well a child is attaining as well as to track progress from their start point in school.This will be administered throughout the Autumn term.

Our school is using the Early Excellence Baseline Assessment – more details can be found at

The Early Excellence Baseline (EExBA) does not include any tasks or tests and will not disrupt children in their everyday learning in our Early Years Foundation Stage Unit. Instead, as part of their usual practice, practitioners build their knowledge of each child through their observations, interactions and activities. They use this professional knowledge to make a series of judgements about each child based on a clear set of assessment criteria

Key Stage 1 SATS 2016

At the end of key stage 1, teacher assessment in mathematics and reading will be informed by externally-set, internally-marked tests. There will also be an externally-set test in grammar, punctuation and spelling which will help to inform the teacher assessment of writing. The tests will be updated to reflect the new national curriculum and will be expressed as a scaled score, with the new assessments first taking place in Summer 2016. Teacher assessment of speaking and listening and science will continue.

Year 1 children will still continue to complete a phonics assessment in the Summer term.

The Year 1 phonics assessment will be administered in the week commencing 13th June 2016.

The Year 2 KS1 SATs will be administered in the week commencing 9 May 2016.

Key Stage 2 SATS 2016

In the summer term of 2016, Year 6 will be the first to take the newSATspapers. These tests in English and maths will reflect the new national curriculum, and are intended to be more rigorous. There will also be a completely new marking scheme to replace the existing national curriculum levels.

These tests will be both set and marked externally, and the results will be used to measure the school’s performance (for example, through reporting to Ofsted and published league tables). Your child’s marks will be used in conjunction with teacher assessment to give a broader picture of their attainment.

At the end of Year 6, children will sit tests in: Reading, Maths, Spelling, punctuation and grammar.

The Year 6 KS2 SATs will be administered in the week commencing 9 May 2016.

KS2 READING

The reading test will provisionally be a single paper with questions based on one 800-word text and two passages of 300 words.Your child will have one hour, including reading time, to complete the test.

There will be a selection of question types, including:

  • Ranking/ordering, e.g. ‘Number the events below to show the order in which they happen in the story’
  • Labelling, e.g. ‘Label the text to show the title of the story’
  • Find and copy, e.g. ‘Find and copy one word that suggests what the weather is like in the story’
  • Short constructed response, e.g. ‘What does the bear eat?’
  • Open-ended response, e.g. ‘Look at the sentence that beginsOnce upon a time. How does the writer increase the tension throughout this paragraph? Explain fully, referring to the text in your answer.’

KS2 GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING

The grammar, punctuation and spelling test will consist of two parts: agrammar and punctuation paperrequiring short answers, lasting 45 minutes, and anaural spelling test of 20 words, lasting around 15 minutes.

The grammar and punctuation test will include two sub-types of questions:

  • Selected response, e.g. ‘Identify the adjectives in the sentence below’
  • Constructed response, e.g. ‘Correct/complete/rewrite the sentence below,’ or, ‘The sentence below has an apostrophe missing. Explain why it needs an apostrophe.’

KS2 MATHS

Children will sit three papers in maths:

  • Paper 1:arithmetic, 30 minutes
  • Papers 2 and 3:mathematical fluency, solving problems and reasoning, 40 minutes per paper

Paper 1 will consist of fixed response questions, where children have to give the correct answer to calculations, including long multiplication and division.

Papers 2 and 3 will involve a number of question types, including:

  • Multiple choice
  • True or false
  • Constrained questions, e.g. giving the answer to a calculation, drawing a shape or completing a table or chart
  • Less constrained questions, where children will have to explain their approach for solving a problem

KS2 SCIENCE

A number of schools will be required to take part in science sampling: a test administered to a selected sample of children thought to be representative of the population as a whole. For those who are selected, there will be three papers:

  • Biology: 25 minutes, 22 marks ; Chemistry: 25 minutes, 22 marks; Physics: 25 minutes, 22 marks.

Sounds very intimidating, but these are ‘questions in a physics/chemistry/biology context’, for example:

  • Biology: ‘Describe the differences in the life cycle of an amphibian and a mammal’
  • Chemistry: ‘Group a list of materials according to whether they are solid, liquid or gas’
  • Physics: ‘Predict whether two magnets will attract or repel each other, based on where the poles are facing’

SCALED SCORES

The existingnational curriculum levelsare being scrapped, and instead children will be given a scaled score at the end of Y6.

Each Y6 pupil registered for the tests will receive:

  • a raw score (number of raw marks awarded)
  • a scaled score
  • confirmation of whether or not they attained the national standard.

It is expected that each school should have at least 85% of its pupils reaching or exceeding the National Standard.

National curriculum tests are designed to be as similar as possible year on year, but slight differences in difficulty will occur between years. Scaled scores maintain their meaning over time so that two pupils achieving the same scaled score on two different tests will have demonstrated the same attainment for example, the scale 100 will always represent the ‘national standard’.

The DFE can’t give full information about what the scale will look like yet. They need to wait until pupils have taken the tests and the tests have been marked before they can set the national standard and the rest of the scale. The scale isn’t set in advance; this cohort is the first that has reached the end of key stage 2 having studied sufficient content from the new national curriculum.

We do know the scale will have a lower end point below 100 and an upper end point above 100. Once national standard has been set the DFE will use a statistical technique called ‘scaling’ to transform the raw score into a scaled score.

The standards underpinning the scale will be maintained as long as there is no large-scale change to what the tests cover. Once the national standard has been set in summer 2016, the DFE will maintain the standard in subsequent years by using a process known as ‘test equating’.

INTERPRETING SCALED SCORES

A pupil’s scaled score will be based on their raw score. The raw score is the total number of marks a pupil receives in a test, based on the number of questions they answered correctly. The pupil’s raw score will be translated into a scaled score using a conversion table. A pupil who achieves the national standard will have demonstrated sufficient knowledge in the areas assessed by the tests. This will mean that they are well placed to succeed in the next phase of their education.

The old national curriculum levels are not relevant to the new national curriculum. However, in order to provide schools with some indication of the new standards, we have tried to indicate equivalence in a broad sense. At KS1 the national standard will roughly equate to an old level 2b. At KS2 this will roughly equate to an old level 4b. Otherwise levels and scaled scores will not be comparable to Key Stage tests