ASSESSMENT
Our vision – Inspired to learn, supported to succeed
Ringwood School regularly tracks and monitors every student’s achievements in order to recognise students who are making good progress or to implement relevant intervention, when necessary, should concerns come to light. Once a term, this information will be sent home to parents.
Our assessment system for key stage three is designed to identify whether your child is making good progress in year 7, 8 and 9 and is therefore on track to meet their GCSE targets at the end of year 11. In Year 7, each student will be assigned to a flightpath. These give a challenging and realistic indication of the GCSE outcomes that students should be aiming to achieve.
The flightpaths are subject specific and are determined using students’ prior attainment, nationally bench marked targets and teachers’ professional judgement. Each band has a set of assessment descriptors, which reflect the skills, knowledge and understanding a student will demonstrate if they are working in that particular band. These bands will be used by your child’s teacher when assessing work completed in class and for home learning, to identify the skills and knowledge your child has mastered and what they need to do to continue to make progress.
Each piece of work will test some of the descriptors, but over time and using a range of types of assessment, your child’s progress related to all of the descriptors will be carefully considered by their teacher. The standard your child has achieved in all of these assessments will then be used to determine the progress they are making. This information will be reported to you and your son or daughter using these terms:
| Above Flightpath (If they are working above the flightpath above the one they are targeted to be in) | On Flightpath (If they are working in the flightpath that they are targeted to be in) | Below Flightpath (If they are working in the flightpath below the one they are targeted to be in) | Well Below Flightpath (If they are working in a flightpath more than one underneath the one they are targeted to be in.) |
In this way, we are always looking at the progress students are making towards a challenging, realistic GCSE target. On students’ work, you will see feedback which refers to next-steps targets. It will directly reference the assessment descriptors by showing students what they can now do and what they need to focus on next to improve and make even better progress.
Assessment Descriptors
Year 7 Assessment Booklet All Subjects
Year 8 Assessment Booklet All Subjects
Year 9 Assessment Booklet All Subjects
Explaining our Key Stage Three Assessment System:
Talking to your child about their progress. When a progress check is sent home, you may find some of the following questions useful when discussing it with your child:
Which subject are you particularly pleased with?
What is going well in this subject?
Is there anything you do in these lessons that you could start to do in lessons that you don’t find so easy?
What are you going to work on next, to continue making good progress?
How can you stretch yourself to make the most progress possible?
What is holding you back from making more progress in this subject?
Are there any surprises here?
If so, what do you think might help to explain them?
Attitudes to learning:
Detailed descriptors for your child attitude to learning scores (Presentation, Home learning, Behaviour for learning and Classwork) can be found by clicking the following links:
Attitudinal descriptors for KS3 and 4 Progress checks
Attitudinal Descriptors for Sixth Form Progress Checks
Ringwood School Student Scholar award scheme: KS3, KS4 and KS5 can be found here. If you have any questions about our new KS3 assessment approach, please contact: rachel.heaver-webb@ringwood.hants.sch.uk