Mr Lee Cross (Headteacher) is the Examinations Officer and Ms Maritza (School Business, Finance and Operations Manager) is the Quality Nominee and manage the administration of public and internal exams within School.

How we monitor progress – definitions

The following terms describe how we monitor the progress of our pupils.

Progress: This is how quickly and effectively a child moves through the learning objectives and targets within a term, year or key stage. Ultimately the faster the rate of progress the more quickly a child will achieve the next assessment belt and subsequently the larger the Average Points Score (APS) number. As a school we judge progress from a child’s baseline entry into the school and is appropriately colour coded to make reading a child’s report easier. However, please understand that a child’s social, emotional and behavioural challenges can affect the rate of progress as does their attendance.

Attainment: This is the highest APS / belt a child has completed at the End of Key Stage 3 (EKS3) and again at the End of Key Stage 4 (EKS4) for any given subject. As well as celebrating a child’s progress we also compare their attainment to all pupils nationally with no SEND and those in surrounding SEMH schools / training providers as a means of validating the hard work of a child’s achievements.

Moderation:  This is the process by which teacher judgements are reviewed, if necessary adjusted and ultimatley varified collectively. The process involves sharing examples of work and any supporting evidence, in order to establish agreement within the School of what would be expected from a child in order to achieve their APS and assessment belt in any given subject area. Moderation is carried out termly within the School (or in accordance with examination bodies recommendations). On completion of internal moderation, the process is repeated with other school beyond our own to further improve the validity and relaibility of the end judgements.

Attainment and Progression

Each term we publish pupil’s reports highlighting how they are progressing within the subjects they are taught in, providing a colour coded judgement regarding progress (from baseline entry into the School). We publish pupils attainment annually through their annual review and / or EHCP process, making reference to any prior learning in the form of End of Key Stage 2 (EKS2) SAT’s.

KS3 sample report
KS4 sample report

At the moment Elmwood School utilises the National Progression Guidance Grid (Data Set 1) for Englsh and Maths to set appropriately challenging targets within the Upper Quartile (UQ). We also share Median Quartile (MQ) and Lower Quartile (LQ) targets with pupils so they can assess there own learning in smaller steps through pupil learning journals.

Pupil Learning Journal Website Example (Key Stage 3 & 4) click on side balloon to see comments

Abbreviation

  Name What is it? What does that mean?
UQ Upper Quartile That part of the score above the 75th percentile The score that schools would ideally like to achieve for all their pupils.
MQ Median Quartile The 50th percentile The halfway point between good and less good scores.
LQ Lower Quartile That part of the score below the 25th percentile. While some children score within this area, it is not ideal – but there maybe justifications for this e.g. attendance or serverity of their SEND.

Here is an example of using the National Progression Guidance (Data Set 1).

National Progression Guidance Example

 

KS4 Average Point Scores Maths
  Point scores
KS2 GCSE LQ GCSE Median GCSE UQ
W 0 16 22
1 0 16 22
2 16 22 22
3 22 28 34
4 34 40 40
5 46 46 52

For example, if a child secured a National Curriculum Level 3 at the EKS2 a child’s target at Elwmood would be 34APS / GCSE D. This would mean that a child would be functioning in the top 25% of pupils nationally who had the same starting point as themselves at the EKS2.

We use the following statement to make our judgements about progress:

  • If a child is making 1 APS progress over a term or 3 APS progress over an academic year we regard this as working at expected progress (from baseline entry into the School).
  • If a child is making 2 (or more) APS progress over a term or 4 (or more) APS progress over an academic year we regard this as working above expected progress (from baseline entry into the School).