Termly Assessment Reports

Target Tracker is the system that we use to track the progress & attainment children in Years 1-6. Teachers use this continuously and report results to the Headteacher & Governors 3 times a year.

The school will now report to parents three times a year (once after Christmas, once after Easter and then in their end of year reports) and we hope that parents will find it useful to see where their child is up to in terms of attainments and what progress they are making across the year.

Target Tracker

The National Curriculum has been written to give Age Related Expectations (ARE) for the end of each year. As children travel from Year 1 to Year 6 in our school, they are tracked against the Age Related Expectations. At Whitfield St James’ we use Target Tracker to support our tracking, this provides us with numbered bands and steps to track children.

What are Steps?
Each year band has been broken down into six steps with in the year group:
– below (b)
– below + (b+)
– working within (w)
– working within + (w+)
– secure (s)
– secure + (s+)

What does each step actually mean?
The three broader sections may be thought of in these terms;
– B/B+ Below – Pupils are beginning to access their year group criteria.

– W/W+ Working Within – Pupils have met the age related expectations.

– S /S+ Secure – Pupils are working at greater depth and have secure knowledge of the years’ expectations.

Lower attaining pupils may be working at a band outside of their current year.

For children to be working at age related expectation, they would need to reach the working within + (W+) step at the end of the appropriate year.

Why have we got ‘b’ and ‘b+’?
Each band is broken into two parts to enable progress within the band to be evident.

For example, a pupil may be assessed as 2 below (2b) in the Autumn term in Year 2. The next time the teacher records their assessment they may not feel that the pupil has progressed to Working Within, but the pupil has made progress. An assessment of Below + (2b+) will allow that progress to be shown.

The school has 3 major assessment windows during the year where progress is entered into Target Tracker and three assessment windows. November/December, March/April and June/July (dependent on when holidays fall).

So what’s the ‘s+’ step all about?
The advice from the Government is that pupils who have gained a secure understanding of the Y1 programme of study, for example, should not be automatically moved on to the next year’s programme.

Instead they should be provided with extension work to deepen and consolidate their understanding of the concepts and skills already grasped.

The current curriculum is challenging so this extension work will be covered by a small cohort of each year group. Secure +, pupils have attained a more thorough and wide ranging grasp of the content and concepts.

Secure + is a stepping stone on to the criteria in the following band.

If your child is at the previous year groups criteria but at S at the end of the Autumn term, they are on track to meet the end of year expectations in their current year group.

Example: If a child in Y3 at the end of Autumn term achieves 2S they are expected to reach 3W+ by the end of the Summer term.

Where should my child be ideally?
This will obviously depend on the pupil’s ability level and how hard they work!

However, the expected standard at the end of each academic year will be ‘W+’ – ‘Working within +’.

BUT we will be tracking progress as well and each pupil will ideally make 6 ‘steps’ of progress from one year to the next.

So ‘Helen’ who was ‘2W+’ (Year 2 and ‘working at’) at the end of Y2, should be ‘3W+’ by the end of Year 3 and achieve ‘Expected’ by the end of Year 6 in their SATs results.

Parental support in our school is great and many parents  have asked through the parent questionnaire that we share assessment information more regularly than the two parents evening and end of year report. Previously, the school sent a report card out every half term about progress and effort. We have adapted this proforma with the help of parents, governors and staff in school using our assessment system. 

This is the first time data has been shared with all parents in this format and the system will take some getting used to. There will be a meeting in the next term to explain this further and more information on the website. I will also create a Q&A page as questions get asked.

Children are expected to be working within their year group objectives. However, children develop and progress differently and pupils need to be taught at their level. 

To assess your child, we use a combination of testing to see what they can apply and teacher assessment.

Throughout the term, teachers have been planning and assessing your child’s learning against a series of age-related learning objectives linked to the national curriculum.

By the end of the academic year (Sum 2), pupils are expected to be W+ on their year group objectives for Reading, Writing, SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar) and Maths. Therefore, if they are working on the year group objectives below their year group or at B or B+, it isn’t anything to worry about. This assessment is one term (Autumn term) and there are 2 more terms to cover the year group objectives and make progress.

Pupils on track by term

A pupil working at S and S+ on their year group objectives is working at greater depth and working above age related expectation in sum 2.