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Assessment – Key Messages
1. Is integral to learning and teaching
- involves all stakeholders, most importantly the learner
- is ongoing, periodic, at times of transition
2. Builds capacity in practitioners to make professional
judgements underpinned by professional dialogue
- assessment requires a variety of approaches generating
a body of quality evidence
- assessment and moderation are integral to each other
3. Is holistic and informative
- has many purposes, the most important of which is to
support the learner journey
- goes beyond KU alone to include skills, attributes and capabilities
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Is Integral to Learning and Teaching
• Assessment is part of learning and is on-going in the classroom.
• Learners understand their learning and are involved in dialogue
about it.
• At times, more formal or structured assessment is used to test
understanding, skill development or attributes.
• The profiling process and the production of a profile are integral to a
learner understanding their own learning.
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Build Professional Judgement
• Moderation by practitioners is fundamental to ensuring a rigorous,
robust and credible assessment system.
• Moderation supports practitioners in reaching a shared
understanding of –
planning
learning and teaching
assessment (on-going approaches e.g. learning logs and/or more
structured or formal evidence).
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Build Professional Judgement (cont.)
• Time needs to be allocated to moderation to allow practitioners to
develop their skills/competence in the process.
• Moderation helps staff to develop their understanding of the quality
of children’s work so that they can transfer this to areas not being
moderated.
• Moderation is robust in assessing learning and the range of learning.
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Holistic and Informative
• Holistic assessment captures not just knowledge and understanding
but also the skills, capabilities and attributes of learners.
• To allow holistic judgements to be made, there should be
opportunities for assessment across the four contexts of learning.
• Assessment should include children’s ability to work in, and with,
higher order thinking skills
• Holistic assessment informs future learning and can be used by
learners to inform profiling and by practitioners to inform reporting.
All of this applies from age 3-18.
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How do I Report Progress?
Involve parents so that any changes being made are understood and
supported .
Ensure the changes are in line with BtC5.
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How do I Report Progress?
Not just once a year
•
•
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School show
School newsletter
Open day
Parents’ evenings
Children skilled up to discuss progress with parents – profiling
process
• On-going communications e.g. learning logs, diary
Brief summary report at the end of the year – main achievements
and a limited number of next steps.
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What do I Say at Parents’ Night?
• The learner’s achievements.
• A limited number of next steps.
• How parents can support the learning.
Many schools are using the children to lead such conversations
– after all, it is about their learning.
Transforming lives through learning
www.educationscotland.gov.uk
Transforming lives through learning