Waverley School - Assessment and Moderation

Assessment and Moderation

As Waverley School provides for a wide range of pupils with varying needs and of different ages, abilities and learning styles, the curriculum, assessment process, and measures of progress used must reflect this diversity.

Assessment is used to enable a better understanding of pupils and therefore enables staff to focus on and monitor the teaching and learning more effectively.

Assessment is used to monitor and measure pupil progress, inform planning, and target setting.

Assessment Techniques

Formative assessment takes place in a variety of ways. Information gathered is used to inform planning and teaching. The following techniques are used:

Observations
Scrutiny of work
Discussion with parents and other professionals (including our multi-disciplinary team)
Pupils assessment of their own work
Reports from other professionals
Photographs and Video evidence stored on Evidence for learning

Due to the complexity of the needs of our pupils, the National Curriculum assessment arrangements are not informative for our pupils.

Pupils at Waverley are assessed via GAS (Goal Attainment Scaling) and their progress within our curriculum.

GAS link directly to the pupil’s operation which is set during the duration of their Education, Health, and Care plan outcomes (EHCP), Each goal is broken into five development steps. It is expected that pupils attain on average three steps for each goal each year. Curriculum progress is assessed as "I can" statements. These statements are linked to skills needed to prepare for adulthood.

Moderation

We have developed a system to carefully monitor the progress our pupils are making across the whole school. We use a range of assessment tools to gather evidence and then look at all of this information at the end of each term. This enables us to monitor the progress each child is making from their starting points and identify pupils who are not making the progress we would expect so that we can put appropriate support in place.

Assessment information for all students is compiled from the following systems:

GAS individual targets evaluated at the end of each term
Bespoke curriculum assessment (main site - Waverley Steps; Pre-school sites - Developmental Markers)
Engagement Model Observations (Y2 and Y6 pupils only)
Evidence for Learning observations, photos and videos of pupil learning (tagged to curriculum frameworks and GAS individual targets)
Termly pupil progress meeting with SLT to make and moderate judgements for each pupil

We have defined the rates of progress pupils may make as follows:

Above Expected Progress: Pupils who are making significant and sustained progress in one or more areas of their development and making good progress in all areas of development.

Expected Progress: Pupils are making good progress in all areas of their development and there are no concerns about the pupil in any area.

Below Expected Progress: Pupils who are not making progress in one or more areas of development or there are concerns about the rate of progress.