Assessment

Assessment is at the heart of a successful curriculum and is a fundamental part of good teaching and learning. It enables learners to recognise achievement and make progress, and teachers to shape and adapt their teaching to individual needs and aspirations. Effective assessment enables learners to make smooth progress throughout their time at school.

This section looks at new ways of thinking about and organising assessment to ensure it has a positive impact on teaching and learning and pupils' progress. It covers six different areas:

• Assessment key principles, where you will find information on the four principles that underpin effective assessment. These include putting the learner at the heart of assessment, creating assessment that gives a view of the whole learner, ensuring that assessment is integral to teaching and learning, and making reliable judgements about how learners are doing related, where appropriate, to national standards

• Assessment and the curriculum, where you will find practical guidance on developing whole-school approaches to assessments, an explanation of day-to-day, periodic and transitional assessment and information on the exemplification of standards

• Assessing pupils' progress, where you will find information on a new structured approach to teacher assessment which equips teachers to make judgements on pupils' progress and provides learners with next steps to improve

• Developing assessment, where you will find information about assessment across subject boundaries and beyond the classroom, and guidance on developing assessment of skills

• Assessment FAQs, where you will find answers to frequently asked questions about QCDA’s vision for assessment, materials to support teacher assessment, the Making Good Progress pilot, and about the amended level descriptions and when they take effect

• National Curriculum in action, where you will find examples of pupils' work exemplifying standards relating to the programmes of study and attainment targets.