Assessment Policy

Qualifying Statement:

Due to the changing nature of the Link School cohort, measuring progress across the key stages can be challenging.  The small number of learners in all key stages also makes the statistical analysis of trends difficult. Some of the issues faced include:

• Learners coming on roll throughout the whole of the academic year.
• Learners having a short stay, eg. 12 week placement
• Learners arriving with huge gaps in their knowledge due to disengagement/ absence/ exclusions from lessons
• A wide range of complex individual need e.g. including behavioral, spld, mld, SEN, mental health and addiction issues.
• A wide range of home circumstances e.g. some students experience settled home backgrounds whilst others experience extremely traumatic home lives characterised by alcohol, drug abuse, domestic violence, criminality and mental health issues. A significant number of students are in Local Authority Care.

In short, for some students even a very small amount of academic progress over a period of time can be nothing short of miraculous where, for others, the same amount of progress would be deemed as unsatisfactory.

At The Link School, the collection and storage of assessment data is managed using the assessment data base.

 

Aims of the policy:

We recognise that the assessment process is crucial and in order to be effective in this we aim:

• To provide clear guidelines on the school’s approach to assessment.
• To establish a coherent approach to assessment across all departments.
• To provide a system that is clear to learners, staff and other stakeholders.

 

Types of Assessment used in the Link School:

Summative assessment

Provides a snapshot of attainment at the end of a unit, term, year group, key stage or when a pupil is leaving the school. It makes judgments about a pupils’ performance in relation to national standards.

Formative assessment

Assessment for Learning is the day to day ongoing assessment to enable teachers to identify the next steps in a pupils’ learning and to enable pupils to have greater involvement and responsibility for their own learning. Key strategies used to ensure good formative assessment takes place include observation, discussion, questioning, paired response work and quality marking.

Diagnostic

Diagnostic assessment helps to identify pupil’s strengths and areas for development. We use outcomes from assessments to plan future work and to identify groups of children who need support. This process also helps us with our target setting and to reflect on teaching and learning strategies which we use

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You can read our full Assessment, Marking and Feedback Policy by downloading the PDF below.

  Assessment, Marking and Feedback Policy – PDF