St Martin's School
An independent, co-educational preparatory school.
At St Martin’s School, we use both formative and summative assessment systems to measure progress. This gives us the opportunity to close gaps in the children’s learning and forms the basis of how we inform parents of progress.
Formative Assessment is undertaken by the teacher in every lesson. It is the basis of teaching and learning and allows teachers to give immediate feedback to pupils. It also allows teachers to understand pupil performance on a continuing basis; it is used to assess knowledge, skills and understanding, and to identify gaps and misconceptions. The methods of formative assessment we use include: the use of appropriate questioning, marking of pupils’ work using our marking policy and observational assessment. In addition, we use a system of AAO (Assessment Against Objectives) sheets to ensure that feedback is structured and tracked. It ensures that gaps in the children’s knowledge are targeted. Formative assessment helps pupils to measure their knowledge and understanding against the lesson objective and success criteria. They can then identify how they can improve.
Summative assessment tests are undertaken across the school (Forms 1-6). They are completed digitally, and each pupil is given an age-related score. In EYFS, we use the Development Matters and Early Learning Goals (ELGs) as a part of their daily observation, assessment and planning. This data gives a good indication of whether pupils are working towards, meeting or exceeding year group expectations.
Assessment information is used to plan teaching and learning strategies for individual pupils, including the identification of those children that are working below their age-related expectation, need further support in their learning to make progress, or those that need further challenges and scholarship. The outcome of this is that children are consistently making very good progress and are achieving highly.