Reforms to School
Accountability and
Assessment
Kate Ridley-Moy, Department for Education
October 2014
Reformed Assessment and Accountability
Framework
“….it is right that schools and colleges would be held accountable for ensuring
every child is able to read and write well, and has good maths skills. This will
mean all young people leave education with the skills needed to compete for
apprenticeships, places at leading universities and good jobs, helping to build a
stronger economy and a fairer society”
Schools Minister David Laws 27th March 2014
What’s the behaviour we’re hoping to see?
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We want schools to assess children in a way which matches their
curriculum, allows them to give meaningful feedback and ensures progress.
We expect a renewed focus on progression in the accountability system will
lead to schools and colleges focussing on all pupils/students.
We want a system that delivers a broad and balanced curriculum that leads
to meaningful qualifications, which prepare young people for future
employment and further study.
We want a system that recognises success in school improvement – so that
good school leaders want to take on the challenge of difficult schools.
Case for Change – Primary Accountability
Currently primary schools are held to account for pupils reaching ‘level 4’
and making the expected level of progress from end of KS1 to end of KS2.
• A new National Curriculum means that we needed to re-visit the
approach to end of key stage assessment – ‘levels’ will no longer exist
• Expectations are set too low – fewer than half the pupils who had only
just reached the current expected standard went on to achieve 5 good
GCSEs, including English and mathematics
• The current measure does not recognise performance before the end
of KS1
Case for Change – Secondary Accountability
The current system based on 5 A*-C is easy to understand, but contains
three perverse incentives:
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Wolf Review identified that it encourages schools to enter pupils for poor
quality ‘easier to pass’ qualifications;
It can encourage an excessive focus on pupils around the C/D grade
boundary, to the detriment of others; and
It causes a narrow concentration on just five subjects, rather than a
broad curriculum.
Case for Change – Assessment
Ongoing assessment is crucial – but the way it’s done should be left to
schools, reflecting their new curriculum freedoms
• NC levels do not give a meaningful assessment of what pupils know or
can do nor what their next steps are
National assessments, tests and qualifications show how pupils are
performing in a consistent way.
• Both summative teacher assessment and external testing have a part
to play – depending on the age of the pupil
Reforms to National Assessments
New assessments will reflect the more challenging national curriculum.
Specifically we will:
– introduce more challenging tests that will report a precise scaled score
at the end of the key stages rather than a level;
– make detailed performance descriptors available to inform teacher
assessment at the end of key stage 1 and key stage 2. These will be
directly linked to the content of the new curriculum;
– Improve the moderation regime to ensure that teacher assessments
are more consistent.
Support for assessment
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Assessment principles published by DfE to provide guidance to schools
designing new systems
Materials from publishers, other providers and schools (including through
our Assessment Innovation Fund)
Blogs, podcasts and case studies articles from head teachers and schools
already assessing beyond levels.
Teaching Schools Enquiry led by NCTL
NAHT Assessment Commission Report and model systems in English and
maths.
Reception Baseline
To enable progress to be measured from when a cohort of children start
school, we are introducing a new Reception Baseline
– This will be a short, teacher-administered, age appropriate assessment
conducted in the first few weeks of a child starting school.
– Schools will be able to choose from a range of baselines in September
2015 – a list of suppliers will be available in January 2015.
– The reception baseline will be the only measure used to assess
progress for children who start reception in September 2016 and
beyond.
– From September 2016, teachers will be no longer required to carry out
and submit data on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile.
Reforms to Qualifications
Better qualifications for KS4 and KS5
– New GCSEs and A Levels with teaching beginning in 2015;
– Only counting high value vocational qualifications that meet rigorous
criteria in performance measures
New Floor Standards
A new primary floor standard will reflect the raised expectations of
primary schools and recognise the excellent work they do. We will:
– set a challenging aspiration that 85% of children should achieve the
new expected standard by the end of primary school;
– introduce a new measure, based on the progress made by pupils from
reception to the end of primary school.
– A school will fall below the floor only if pupils make poor progress and
fewer than 85% of them achieve the new expected standard;
A new secondary floor standard based on pupils’ average scores across
a suite of 8 qualifications.
The progress 8 measure
Looking ahead
September 2014
First teaching of new
national curriculum
and removal of
levels
2014/15
Summer 2015
Final KS2 tests
based on previous
curriculum
September 2015
Reception baseline
available
First teaching of new
GCSEs and A levels
2015/16
Summer 2016
First new KS2
tests and new
KS1 assessments
2016 KS4 results
used in Progress
8 mesure
September 2016
Reception baseline
becomes only way for
progress to be
measured for
accountability
2016/17
Summer 2017
First new GCSEs
and A levels sat
Thank you