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?

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:

• 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

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 StandardsA 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

2016/172015/162014/15

September 2014First teaching of new national curriculum and removal of levels

September 2015Reception baseline availableFirst teaching of new GCSEs and A levels

Summer 2015Final KS2 tests

based on previous curriculum

Summer 2016First new KS2

tests and new KS1 assessments

2016 KS4 results used in Progress 8

mesure

September 2016Reception baseline becomes only way for progress to be measured for accountability

Summer 2017First new GCSEs and A levels sat

Thank you