Blog

Providers of EdTech have a social responsibility to make intuitive, well-supported products that save schools money, reduce teacher workload, and ultimately improve outcomes for children, whether directly or indirectly. Teachers go above and beyond every day, and so should we. Read Article…

Accountability measures are complicated and this year we don’t even have progress measures to get our heads round. So let’s have a look at which pupils take the tests, who’s included in the measures, and how schools can get pupils discounted from results. Who should participate in tests? The Assessment and Reporting Arrangements (ARA) states that pupils should not take tests if any of the following apply: The last three points are fairly self-explanatory – if a pupil is working below the standards of the key stage or is unable to access the test they should not be entered for them –… Read Article…

In the second of our series about tracking pupils with Special Needs and Disabilities (SEND), we consider the wider range of assessment tools that schools might use to track their SEND students. Read Article…

In nearly all cases, when we use the phrase ‘age-related expectations’ we actually mean curriculum expectations. The teacher’s assessment reflects the pupil’s security in the curriculum at that point in time, taking into account what has been taught and understood so far; the only link to the child’s age is the year group they are in, which defines the curriculum they are taught. Beyond that – unless the school is using age-standardised scores derived from some commercially available tests – the pupil’s age is not taken into account when making an assessment. It is only in the Early Years phase… Read Article…

As with the Multiplication Screening Check and KS2 Maths, here at Insight Inform we are often asked whether there is a connection between the raw scores recorded in the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) and scaled scores recorded five years later in the key stage 2 Reading SATs. One regular question is whether the PSC has any predictive power for KS2 results. To answer the question, we have used data from 93,198 pupils whose 2019 PSC and 2024 KS2 Reading scores are recorded in Insight. The distributions of the two sets of scores give a good indication as to why there… Read Article…

We look at what you have to do when assessing in Reception, what resources are available, what your options are and what we suggest you do. Read Article…

In this follow up post to our earlier Governors, Data, and the Long Shadow of RAISEonline, we look at the key pieces of information your governors need. Read Article…

The 2019 Education Assessment Framework states that inspectors and those in school should ‘understand the limitations of assessment’; what does this statement mean? Read Article…