Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 10 - At what age should this type of tracking begin? (& tracking inputs)

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Young children need to have access to a curriculum which allows them to develop different skills at different times.  Thus during the EYFS and KS1 the emphasis on tracking progress should be placed not on the outcomes in the child but on the child having access to well structured and appropriate learning opportunities.  I think it's reasonable to argue that such an approach could also apply to year 3, creating more space within which a focus on students engaging with the formative concrete tasks which will give students a secure foundation for the later abstraction of insights can be cherished.

So it would be more appropriate for a school to use a tracking system based on an ICT framework like this to share information with parents regarding a child's progress through a reading scheme and their engagement with wider schemes of activities than it would be to share information about the particular attainment targets a child has reached. The focus should be on progress with formative rather than summative activities.

I would hope that a criteria based tracking system for older children would retain a component strand which creates space for each child's engagement with activities which  are intended for formative rather than summative purposes to be shared.  For example if a class is engaging with a practical investigation in mathematics for a single lesson, it should be possible for the teacher to record in a couple of sentences what took place during the lessons and export that comment instantly to the record of every child who was there.  If students took part in an investigation which lasted for several lessons it might be appropriate for a teacher to record individual comments regarding what they achieved (the teacher may also want to store photos of work).  Older students or teachers may then wish to refer to these comments when they are reviewing their progress against criteria which are not so easily assessed, such as their ability to select which pieces of knowledge to use in practical contexts, their confidence in finding strategies to move on when they are stuck and their skills in co-operating with other students.

I would suggest that designers of such systems take care to pay separate attention to the needs of students, parents and teacher up to the age of 8 and their needs from ages 8-14 and should then look to merge the systems on to a single framework.  Ideally I would have completely separate teams working on the designs for the two systems - bringing them together to design an product which includes both systems only when they are well advanced in their thinking.

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)

Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 9 - Bridging the Primary/Secondary Divide

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At present students generally transfer from primary school to secondary school with just three grades - their SATS results in English, Maths and Science.

These grades bring with them two main problems:
- Firstly they are too broad-brush and give little insight into what each child can and can't do.  For example one child may achieve a particular level in maths without answering a single question with content at that level or higher.  However another may achieve the same level by answering questions at harder levels but losing marks at lower levels through carelessness or through them having gaps in their knowledge which it is important to fill.  A system of integrated formative and summative assessment could provide far more detailed and useful information at the time when a child transfers between schools.

- Secondly they are too high stakes and are based on just a few exams.
The pressure on primary schools to cram students so that grades are artificially inflated and knowledge is not retained is intense.  The grade they achieve represents only what they could do under exam conditions during one week.  A system of integrated formative and summative assessment would remove the need for students to engage in high stakes exams and could far more accurately  record what they can and can't do by accumulating data over time which can include multiple perspectives on each criterion.

It is therefore essential that those designing systems of integrated formative and summative assessment plan for how data can be transferred between schools whether or not the school a child moves to is using the same tracking system as their previous school.

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)

Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 8 - Student Behaviour Mangament

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When designing a system of integrated formative and summative assessment, it is worth considering how such a system will link to any systems a school may already have in place for tracking student behaviour.

It seems appropriate that a system of integrated formative and summative assessment should be proactively designed to work well with any systems of behaviour tracking a school may use as the two issues impact so closely on each other.

Edward Whittaker at IRIS was very helpful in helping me to understand some of the issues involved in behaviour tracking.

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)

Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 7 - Supporting Diversity

This blog is subject to these protocols

Designers of a system of integrated formative and summative assessment consider the practicalities of recording students' progress in areas which are not part of the core curriculum.

It should be possible for people to write educational material in new or overlapping areas and for students who have studied it to a creditable level to have their progress recorded.

For example mathematicians may wish to write modules on new topics and my develop interactive test for them.  It may be possible for students to gain formal (if their completion of the test is observed by an accredited person) or informal credit for their progress.  I think the National Curriculum levels we have developed could form a useful guide for giving an indication of the difficulty of non-core curriculum content.  

Or it may be the case that, in the context of say a football world cup, educational resources are developed which cover core curriculum points in a 'football context' which engage and motivate students who are passionate about football in studying aspects of the curriculum from physiology to mechanics to competition planning.  System designers should consider whether such work should be accredited separately or whether the core curriculum targets it covers should be accredited instead.

The Modern Baccalaureate exemplifies one way in which progress can be recorded.  ASDAN is an example of an organisation which accredits the qualifications developed by many other bodies in education.  It's interesting and important to look at the ways in which the Modern Baccalaureate and ASDAN interact with each other.  It is my expectation that a well designed student tracking and accreditation system will need to interact rapidly and fluently with many external bodies.

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)

Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 6 - Central Tracking of Progress

This blog is subject to these protocols

One of the benefits of SATS results is that they can be easily used by remote parties to identify signs of possible problems in schools.

However unfortunately the broad-brush nature of SATS results reveals little detail regarding the nature of any problems which may exist.

It is likely that those with oversight of schools, be they local authorities, academy chains or central government education services will wish to be able to access and analyse schools tracking systems.  In my opinion it would be wiser that they had access to detailed information regarding students progress than that they just had access to summative grades.

Alan Teece at Alfiesoft had particular insight into the practicalities of how systems could be connected to central government records.

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)

Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 5 - More about online testing

This blog is subject to these protocols

When designing a system for online testing the following questions will need to be considered:

1. If the results of online tests are to lead to formal accreditation, how should they be administrated?
2. Should it be possible to do tests which do not lead to formal accreditation as well as those which do?
3. Should tests auto-adjust so that if students get many questions wrong easier questions appear?
4. Will the teacher be able to specify which questions should appear on the test?
5. Will the teacher be able to print paper tests?
6. Will criteria be accredited based on a single correct answer, a variety of correct answers, correct answers sustained over time, correct answers in contextualised or connected questions....
7. How will results be viewed and how will this interface with skills which cannot be effectively tested online?

Companies which are already well established in this field include:

Khan Academy :
Originally designed for teaching using YouTube videos rather than for testing and tracking, Khan Academy has set up a substantial infrastructure for online testing and tracking to work in parallel with its videos.  Khan Academy covers many subject areas to a very high level and is well resourced, so it is likely that schools and educators with limited resources will use it, but it does not interface with other student teaching and tracking resources and it may be weak in the specific teaching area which is most important to a group of students.

MyMaths:
MyMaths is well known for its high quality interactive teaching resources.  It is very popular in UK schools and has a substantial tracking infrastructure which teachers can use to rapidly see the progress of all their students with their tests and homeworks in specific subject areas.  However the tracking is by lesson rather than by specific learning point and only maths is available.  MyMaths was rapidly adopted by word of mouth because at an annual subscription of only around £400/year per school it was within the budget of a typical secondary school maths department.

Alfiesoft:
Alfiesoft differs from the products above because its design and emphasis starts from testing rather than teaching, so its designers have thought in more detail about the questions at the top of this blog rather than focusing on creating a system to assess an already designed system of online teaching.  Alfiesoft has an interface with SIMS.  It covers maths, English and science but it does not link to an online teaching system.

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)

Assessing students up to age 14 - A better future. Part 4 - Being allowed to test what is testable.

Reflection and Context:

It's been our habit in the past to try and create a single method for assessing academic progress in mathematics and this has tended to swing between testing everything and getting the teachers to observe everything the student does.

As a head of mathematics I wanted to be able to efficiently and effectively test those aspects of mathematical progress which are easily testable so that my teaching of core techniques could be efficient and needs based, leaving as much time as possible for the nurturing of those skills students need to develop which cannot be easily tested. 

When we focus on teaching methods which allow students to connect maths and work out which mathematical techniques they need, a great deal of learning of mathematical techniques and vocabulary takes place but this progress is difficult to track.  Having a system which takes care of that tracking process for teachers empowers this type of learning.

In an article in MT210 (as Rebecca Teasdale), I described how I used MyMaths tracking to achieve this shift in teaching in a school where I was head of Maths.  We rapidly positively transformed results at this school to surpass all targets and re-engaged disaffected students. 

MyMaths had, at that time, interactive lessons and assessments on all national curriculum topics.  By requiring students to complete them I could ensure they studied all these topics at their own pace and that I had detailed information regarding gaps which needed to be filled.  But far more importantly, we could focus on creating lessons which properly engaged all students by subordinating teaching to learning, teaching with rich and applied tasks and teaching core vocabulary and techniques only when it was clear they were needed.

Key Recommendation:

That to accompany an electronic system which defines the skills students should be acquiring, automatic testing systems should be created which test and automatically accredit those skills which can be easily tested online.  

Subsidiary Points:

- It should be possible for teachers to manually accredit these skills should they wish to do so with alternative evidence.

- Students could be tested in a 'low stakes' way approximately once a term.  Tests should be created which are responsive to students' progress - seeking to test gaps which clearly need to be filled but adjusting during the test to ensure that students do not have overly negative experiences where they fail to answer any questions.  

- Teachers could select core or optional modules of work which would be in each students' test in a class to ensure that focused student preparation brings rewards.

Something a little more challenging:

I think most testable techniques and vocabulary could be accredited on four levels:

A: Some evidence that the student has mastered this skill

B: Sustained evidence that the student has mastered this skill

(both A&B could be tested online with B only being accredited after a student has demonstrated their ability to achieve that target in several tests).

C: Skill used fluently by the student in wider contexts.

D: Student understands the axiomatic or structural roots of the skill (this is not appropriate for arbitrary vocabulary).

And what about the skills which cannot be tested online?

While testing is suitable for most of the 'range and content' component of the National Curriculum, most aspects of Key Concepts, Key Processes, and Curriculum Opportunities cannot be easily tested.  It is my suggestion that these should not be accredited as pass/fail progress but that a process by which students sit down and select or create phrases which reflect how they perceive they are progressing with these aspects of the curriculum be embedded into classroom practice and this self assessment is then discussed with teachers, parents and other stakeholders.  

Assessing students up to the age of 14 – A better future  QUICK LINKS

Part 1: key components of the way forward

Part 2: protocols for this series of blogs

Part 3: integrating formative (APP) and summative (SATS) assessment

Part 4: being allowed to test what is testable

Part 5: more about online testing

Part 6: central tracking of progress

Part 7: supporting diversity

Part 8: student behaviour management

Part 9: bridging the primary/secondary divide

Part 10: at what age should this type of tracking begin? (and tracking inputs)