Internal Assessment Policy

The most important goal of assessment is that it helps students to make progress with their learning. It needs to provide information which is clear, reliable and free from bias. These are the steps we take to ensure this happens.

• Look at the assessment objectives for your subject and the percentage of marks allocated to each.
• Identify what you want students to learn across a topic/unit of work (at KS4 this will come from the specification) ensuring the assessment objectives have been covered.
• Create assessment questions in the style of the GCSE paper and using the weighting for each assessment objective as in the GCSE paper.
• SPaG marks should be included using the same weighting as the GCSE paper.
• Interleave questions from previous topics/units of work (identify these from the weakest questions on the QLA).

• Photocopy a selection of answers/papers ensuring the whole range of abilities are covered and there is a sample from each teacher.
• The relevant mark scheme and pack of answers is given to each teacher.
• Some answers should be marked by teachers before the standardisation meeting to save time.
• Teachers take turns to give a mark for each answer, discuss it alongside the mark scheme and then agree on an overall mark.
• All staff take away a pack to inform them and to refer back to when they mark their own class' pieces.

• Collect a named selection of students' work from each teacher.
• Meet and do a round robin, checking marking and discussing any anomalies.
• Give feedback to each teacher to improve their accuracy.

How the PRAGs for progress are allocated

Progress PRAGs are a colour scale that represent relative progress from KS2.  Purple represents the most progress made relative to other students in the cohort; then green; then amber; and red represents the least progress made.

Each child receives a progress colour (PRAG) and percentile rank:

Attainment PRAGs are a colour scale representing the standard achieved. Purple represents the standard achieved by the top 30% of students; then green represents the next 30% of students; then amber; and red represents the lowest standard.

Each child receives an attainment colour indicating performance relative to their year group:

On track to achieve:

How is the percentile rank for progress calculated?

The percentile rank for progress is calculated by subtracting a student’s KS2 normalised score from their cycle normalised score and then converting this to a percentile rank.

The result of this calculation determines the relative progress made from KS2.  The greater the result, the more substantial progress a student is considered to be making compared to the rest of the year group.

How do teachers use this information to support progress?

By reporting relative progress and percentile rank, subject leaders are able to determine which students to intervene with post-assessment.  The focus of assessment is to determine relative progress and identify gaps in subject knowledge so that gaps are closed. This will be done using question level analysis of the assessments. Students in red will be given extra support to catch up.

Why not use grade boundaries / GCSE grades?

GCSE grades are used to judge a student’s understanding of a full specification.  The amount of knowledge studied in KS3, relative to a specification and the wider domain, is neither broad nor deep enough to extrapolate and benchmark performance against GCSE grades.

Grade boundaries and imagined trajectories (worked back from GCSE grades) are falsely linear and fictional.

Year 10 and 11 exams are normally taken in the Exam Hall during the assessment period which is part of the thirteen week cycles of learning. When possible, students who require support in external exams have this support replicated in during the assessment periods.

These exams test the cumulative knowledge gained so far and comprise of questions from past exams where possible. As the students progress through the Key Stage, the exams become increasingly representative of the exam papers taken in the actual examination.

The marks for every question in the exam is recorded by each teacher to provide question level analysis for each exam and these are used to inform planning for the remainder of the learning cycle and for future first teaching. Every member of staff completes an Instruction Focus Action Plan which uses the outcomes of the Question Level Analysis to ensure that the response to the assessments is planned and can be quality assured by other staff members.

Students are not given a target grade as we believe that this can restrict some students into believing that a target grade is the maximum they can achieve in the exam. Every student is encouraged to push themselves towards the top grade in the exam.

However, staff are informed of the grade which would give the student a positive progress 8 score according to the latest examined data set. This is the minimum expected grade and our expectations are that staff push students beyond this whenever possible.

In accordance with the Code of Practice for the conduct of external qualifications produced by the Ofqual, Tanfield School is committed to ensuring that:

• Internal Assessments are conducted by staff who have the appropriate knowledge, understanding and skills.
• Assessment evidence provided by candidates is produced and authenticated according to the requirements of the relevant Specifications for each subject.
• The consistency of internal assessment is assured through internal standardisation as set out by the Awarding Bodies.
• Staff responsible for internal standardisation and / or assessment attend any compulsory training sessions.

Each Awarding Body publishes procedures for appeals against its decisions, and the Examinations Officer will be able to advise pupils and parents of these procedures.

Appeals may be made to the School regarding the procedures used in internal assessment, but not the actual marks or grades submitted by the School for moderation by the Awarding Body.

A pupil or parent wishing to appeal against the procedures used in internal assessments should contact the Examinations Officer as soon as possible to discuss the appeal, and a written appeal must be received by the School at least two weeks before the date of the last external exam in the subject.

On receipt of a written appeal, an enquiry into the internal assessment will be conducted by the Examinations Officer and the Assistant Headteacher. This enquiry will consider whether the procedures used in the internal assessment conformed to the published requirements of the Awarding Body.

The appellant will be informed in writing of the outcome of the appeal, including details of any relevant communication with the Awarding Body and of any steps taken to further protect the interests of the candidates.

“If at any stage during your exam courses you have concerns about the procedures used in assessing your internally marked work for public exams (e.g. coursework / portfolio / projects) you should see the Examinations Officer as soon as possible”.

In Key Stage 3, parental reports show the following assessment information

• Percentage scored in test
• Ranked progress based on the Key Stage 2 Level on Entry (see Appendix for further details)
• Ranked attainment based on the performance of the whole cohort in that subject.
• Question by question breakdown for each exam to give the student and parent areas to improve on to support the intervention in the classroom

In Key Stage 4 parental reports show the following assessment information.

• Grade achieved in exam
• Percentage achieved in each paper in exam

Question by question breakdown for each exam to give the student and parent areas to improve on to support the intervention in the classroo