Introduction to CEM Primary

Dr Chris JellisResearch Associate

CEM

What Will We Cover?

• What makes a good baseline assessment?• The concept of Developed Ability• Adaptive assessments• CEM Primary assessments

What is a Baseline Assessment?

• A baseline assessment is a measure of what the children know and understand before they have any teaching from us

• It is a summary of the experiences, both

learning and otherwise, that they have had prior to coming to school

What do young children know?• The names of some everyday things• Some letters• Some numbers • Maybe some counting• Maybe some reading• Possibly some simple sums • The most able will be able to retain these things more

readily than others

What Makes a Good Baseline Assessment?

• A good baseline assessment will use items that cover the range of experiences that the children have had and be sufficiently discriminatory that we can separate children into groups depending on what they know.

• Some items are good predictors of future learning and including these allows predictions to be made about progress.

What Can Baseline Data Tell Us That We Don’t Already Know?

• Profile of strengths and weaknesses for planning appropriate learning experiences

• Early indicator of special educational needs

• Monitor progress and attitudes of pupils and cohorts over time

• Enables comparisons between groups to be made more easily

Comparisons• Children within a class– Range of abilities

• Groups such as boys/girls– Differences/Similarities

• Classes within a year-group– Parallel classes

• Current cohorts with previous ones– Changes in intake

• Progress over time– Comparing current performance with previous performance

Developed Ability

• Most assessments include a measure of developed ability

• CEM Primary assessments use– Vocabulary– Non Verbal Ability

• Why would we need that measure?

Developed AbilityMaths

TestMarks

8/107/104/103/10

Average ability

Low ability Average ability

High ability

Assessment Types

• Traditional Assessments– Typical of pencil and paper tests– Range of questions matches national averages

• Adaptive Assessments– Usually computerised– Questions chosen to suit pupil ability

Traditional Assessment

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9 Q10 Q11

Adaptive AssessmentsSubject Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8

Words 1 1 0 1 0 0 0

Words

Letters 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0

Letters 0 1 0

Reading 0 0 0

Numbers 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0

Numbers

Sums 1 0 0 0

Adaptive Assessments

ItemDifficulty

Pupil Age

Pupil Age

Q1Q2

Q3Q4

Q5

Q6Q7

Q8

Q9

Q10

Q1Q2

Q4

Q5

Q6Q7

Q8

Q9

Q10

Q3

Ability

CEM Primary Assessments

Assessment Year Groups Time of Year

ASPECTS Nursery Anytime

PIPS Baseline Reception Fixed

PIPS Y1 to Y6 Fixed

InCAS Y1 to Y6 Anytime

Any Questions?

Chris JellisResearch Associate

CEM