Keep up the support. Petition is now in the Media.

Please keep up the support for this petition. Leicester Mercury's report is out today and Oak Radio are broadcasting an interview. If you can bring this to a national group's attention please do. Here are some findings from The Cambridge Review Trust's report 'Assessment, Standards and Quality of Learning in Primary Education' by Wynne Harlen (2014) 6 – IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT POLICY AND PRACTICE There are significant implications for assessment policy and practice in England to be drawn from this discussion. Before listing the main ones it is important to make explicit the basis of value judgements that inevitably underpin all such statements and are often expressed as guiding principles. The principles endorsed here are the following, drawn from Gardner et al (2010): •Assessment of any kind should ultimately improve learning. •Assessment methods should enable progress in all important learning goals to be facilitated and reported. •Assessment procedures should include explicit processes to ensure that information is valid and is as reliable as necessary for its purpose. •Assessment should promote public understanding of learning goals relevant to pupils’ current and future lives. •Assessment of learning outcomes should be treated as approximations, subject to unavoidable errors. •Assessment should be part of a process of teaching that enables pupils to understand the aims of their learning and how the quality of their work will be judged. •Assessment methods should promote the active engagement of pupils in their learning and its assessment. •Assessment should enable and motivate pupils to show what they can do. •Assessment should combine information of different kinds, including pupils’ self-assessments, to inform decisions about pupils’ learning and achievements. These principles are reflected in the implications drawn for the assessment practice of those working in English education as classroom teachers, school leaders, policy-makers and teacher educators. Classroom teachers •Teachers should use a range of assessment methods that enable the full range of goals of learning and progression towards them to be addressed and that do not restrict the breadth of the curriculum. •Teachers use evidence from their on-going assessment to: o help pupils’ learning; o summarize learning in terms of reporting criteria o reflect upon and improve their teaching. •Teacher should use assessment to advance pupils’ learning by: o using on-going evidence of learning to adapt the pace, challenge and content of activities; o giving feedback to pupils about how to improve or move forward; o providing time for pupils to reflect on and assess their own work. •Teachers should base their summative judgements of pupils’ learning outcomes on evidence drawn from a range of sources which might include tests as well as regular class activities. School leaders •There should be a school policy for assessment that: o requires teachers to conduct effective formative and summative; o emphasises formative assessment with summative judgements made only when necessary to check and record progress; o is regularly discussed among teachers and shared with parents. •Assessment should be conducted through methods consistent with pedagogy that promotes understanding and the development of thinking and learning skills. •Teachers should be encouraged to specify in their lesson planning how to gather evidence of pupils’ learning so that assessment is aligned to the curriculum. •Time should be made available for teachers to meet and discuss assessment and on occasion to observe each other’s practice. Policy-makers •The current use of externally produced and marked tests should be replaced by moderated and well-supported assessment by teachers, which can provide information of greater dependability across all subject areas. •Assessment criteria, linked to programmes of study, should be provided for all subject areas and sub-sections within them so that assessment can be used to help learning and provide a complete record of achievement across the full curriculum. •Moderation to improve the reliability of teachers’ summative assessment should be required, and action taken to overcome distrust through openness about procedures and wider recognition that any assessment is subject to unavoidable errors and results should be treated as approximations. •Monitoring of national standards should be based on sample surveys using a large number of items within a rolling programme which extends beyond the core subjects. Teacher educators •Initial teacher education and professional development should ensure that teachers have the skills to use assessment to support learning and to make reliable summative judgements for reporting pupils’ attainment. •The solid support in the academic literature and research for formative assessment should be reflected in the resources, including time, provided in teacher education courses for developing practices such as questioning, providing feedback, sharing goals with pupils and encouraging pupil self- and peer-assessment. •Group moderation of teachers’ judgements of pupils’ work should be recognised as a valuable form of professional development. Can read the whole report by following the link. http://cprtrust.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/Cambridge-Primary-Review-Trust-Research-Report-1.pdf