Key Stage 3

Assessment, Recording and Reporting

These guidelines aim to provide an overview of the school's practice for assessment, recording and reporting the progress and attainment of students. At the same time, each individual subject has adapted these overriding guidelines in order to meet the differing requirements of assessment within each subject area. The policy will be updated in line with national changes and recommendations in these areas.

Background and Rationale

We have decided to implement a similar system to the previous National Curriculum Levels which we believe will allow our students to grow within each subject area, providing both support and challenge to enable students to flourish at the next level of GCSE's.

Our core ideas behind the KS3 curriculum are to:

• develop the key knowledge, skills and understanding required to access the rigorous GCSE specifications.
• high expectations of all students.
• be simple and easy to understand – for staff, parents and students.
• Enable pupils to demonstrate evidence of progression before they proceed to the next stage.

Attainment will be measured at the end of each term against the target generated from the student's ability banding (KS2 scaled scores or CATS scores if KS2 is not available).

Parents and Carers will receive information each term (Christmas, Easter and the End of the Year) relating to a student's target, their current grade as well as a work ethic score in each subject. From this report as well as the attached notes, each student will be able to determine how far they are from their end of year target and by checking each subject's assessment criteria they will be able to determine what they need to do to improve.

The Target Setting Process

Students will be expected to perform at an assessment grade/end of unit grade which is consistent with their prior attainment, as example of which can be seen in the table below:

Expected KS3 assessment profile of a student with an average Key Stage 2 score of 100 – 103.

It is important to note that assessments gradually become more challenging as students move from year to year, so students can continue making the expected progress.

Mock_Up KS3 Report as an example of what a KS3 report will look like.

Please refer to the KS3 Assessment Criteria which outlines what is expected of students at each grade in each subject.