GL Assessments Survey Report asks several key questions. The say their research, “… makes for sobering reading.”

They  comment:

“It is hard to find anyone – teacher, employer, parent,
politician or policymaker – who isn’t in favour of a broad and
balanced curriculum.”

One answer:

“In England the accountability system wags everything else,”
says Stephen Tierney, CEO of the Blessed Edward Bamber Multi Academy Trust.

In its conclusion, the survey report states:

“There are, too, widespread fears about the immediate and
negative effects exam pressure is having on student wellbeing
and behaviour… The responsibility for that they lay firmly at the door of school accountability.”

The report notes that some secondary schools are starting work on GCSE programmes in Year 7 and that there are similar pressures in the run up to KS2  national tests.

Here are some of the Key Findings:

• 71 % of teachers are concerned that teaching a more restricted curriculum has a negative impact on classroom behaviour.
• 65% said parents ought to be worried about children being
  moved onto a so-called “GCSE flight path” too early,  61% of parents agreed.
• 87% of teachers believe teaching pupils a more rounded curriculum from a younger age would better prepare children for later academic success. 76 % of parents  agreed.
• 91%  of teachers and  believe teaching pupils a more
  rounded curriculum from a younger age would better prepare children for life after school. 78 % of parents agreed
• 78 % think a restricted curriculum does not address children who
  develop at a later stage than their peers.
• 72% think that students have switched off from school because of earlier experiences of exams

There are five years worth of teachers that have never worked with National Curriculum levels, so having this information is good. It puts where we are now into context.  The document is here.

As usual, we suggest you look at the parts of the document that apply to you.

The removal of levels was hoped to

• provide the chance for increasing pupil motivation and engagement
• make better use of formative assessment in the classroom
• reduce the time spent by teachers in recording and tracking
• release time for more in-depth teaching and formative assessment

Whether or not that has been the case in your school will depend on how its leaders have approached things.

Case studies tend to be the best evidence (as long as they haven’t been chosen to make a specific point whilst disregarding any alternative evidence). With this is mind, have a look at the blue boxes for examples. Here are some extracts-

p19: Example 1: one school’s response to AWL
A secondary academy developed its own bespoke assessment system which has subsequently been adopted by other schools in the MAT. The approach is underpinned by the school’s belief that assessment should be driven by curriculum design. Curriculum
leads began by devising key performance indicators (KPIs) based on their curriculum and what they expected students to achieve by the end of year 11 (in their GCSEs). They then worked backwards to identify what needed to be achieved at different points along
the way. The curriculum and KPIs focus on 3 key skill areas – knowledge, understanding and literacy. Teachers devised their own summative tests to ensure that they related to the school’s curriculum. A teacher explained how this prioritised high-quality teaching:
‘It’s made us write the Scheme of Work first and think about the learning and the assessment comes afterwards. Whereas before [we] would have written all the assessments and then written the Scheme of Work around the assessment.’

p20: A senior leader said that the staff were pleased to remove levels, because they considered them to be ‘meaningless’. Now the focus has moved towards students learning the curriculum content and meeting individual targets, with assessment being used to monitor and support this.

Example 5 p42: improved communication with parents
Staff at this large maintained primary school had found it challenging to engage parents in their child’s education. Prior to the removal of levels, staff identified a need to work with parents to explain the upcoming changes and the details of their new approach. They wrote to parents using plain language to describe their new assessment model.
Parents receive reports called ‘progress maps’ 3 times a year in the autumn, spring and summer terms. The system uses emoji faces to summarise each student’s attainment and progress in core subjects. The progress maps also include individual targets for each
subject and tips on how parents can support their children’s education outside of school.
Describing their approach, a year 4 teacher explained ‘Our reporting starts off on the basis of ‘is your child at, above or below expected’. Parents understand this clearly. If the children are below, we still frame it in a positive way and explain [that] ‘your child is below
the expected at the moment, so we’re doing this, this and this to help your child’.’
Parents are also invited into school for face-to-face progress meetings so that teachers can explain anything parents do not understand in the progress reports. In order to encourage parents to attend, the school offers whole-day informal ‘drop-ins’ to provide
increased flexibility. Staff report that these sessions have increased parental engagement – attendance at the ‘drop-ins’ has been good, with an average of 20 parents attending from a class of 30 pupils.

SEND implications? p27

Only a minority of interviewees felt that their school’s assessment approach worked well for pupils with SEN. Others said that their school’s approach did not adequately recognise the small steps of progress made by pupils with SEN. This concern was typically, but not exclusively, mentioned by interviewees from primary
schools.

The workload issue? p27

Most interviewees reported that teachers were now spending a similar amount of time on assessment as before. A few reported a continuing increase in workload due to the requirements of their school’s new approach.