Consultation closing date: 11 October 2013
Your comments must reach us by that date
Primary assessment and accountability under the new national curriculum
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/ Name: Anne Fox
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/ Please Specify: The Communication Trust is a coalition of nearly 50 voluntary and community organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication. We harness our collective expertise to support the children's workforce and commissioners to meet the speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) of all children and young people, particularly those with SLCN.
We do this by raising awareness, providing information and workforce development opportunities, influencing policy, promoting best practice among the children's workforce and commissioning work from our members. The Trust is advised by specialist advisors and works with a broader network of partners.
The Trust, which is partner of the Department for Education, was set up in 2007 by children's charities Afasic and I CAN, with BT and Council for Disabled Children.
Teacher assessment and reporting to parents
1 Will these principles underpin an effective curriculum and assessment system?
/ Yes / /
/ No /
/ Not Sure
/ Comments:
We agree wholeheartedly that effective assessment is part of good teaching; we agree also with the fundamental importance of formative assessmentand the need for meaningful feedback. However, we do not agree that the proposals represent an effective assessment system as they do not fulfil these criteria and are not based on evidence or best practice.
Although we appreciate the rationale for reconsidering national curriculum levels and level descriptors, we have huge concerns about the impact of this on all children and particularly those with SLCN/SEN.
We do not believe that the proposals around ‘Teacher assessment and reporting to parents’ will underpin an effective curriculum and assessment system. We are particularly concerned that:
- National curriculum levels will be removed and not replaced - there are significant damaging and impactful implications for how possible it will be to monitor progression for pupils with SEN and SLCN in particular. At worst, therecommendations negate the possibility of effectively monitoring and supporting effective progression for these children; at best they make it incredibly difficult;
- Schools will be able to introduce their own approaches to formative assessment - we are particularly concerned about the implications of this as we know schools and teachers are not confident, and in many cases competent, in identifying language levels for all children, including those with SLCN[1]. The result could be unintentional inflation of levels and under identification of SLCN, resulting in pupils’ needs not being met;
- The DfE will not prescribe a single system for ongoing assessment and reporting - the real danger here is, as the Department will know, pupils from deprived areas often cluster in particular schools and, without a national standard for teachers to refer to, schools may develop their own attainment targets related to expected local levels. This would mean they would fail to recognise that SLCN is far more prominent in a particular school or community than it would be among a more linguistically able cohort of pupils because their only barometer for comparing expectations would be within the class intake itself. This is something that happened before national standards were introduced. Secondly, there is a relatively small but significant amount of pupil mobility that is often more prevalent in our most vulnerable pupils, again causing complications for pupils, parents and potentially outcomes of these most vulnerable children and young people.
Although we agree teachers should be given more professional autonomy and that our approaches to education certainly should be based in a more solid foundation of evidenced good practice, we certainly do not want to return to that era, where the approaches to assessment for children with SLCN / SEN were inconsistent and often ineffective.
The Department itself clearly recognises the importance of these arguments, as they are reflected in the Draft SEN Code of Practice, which was published by the Department for consultation on 4th October 2013.
The Draft Code states that in all schools the identification of SEN should be built into the overall approach to monitoring the progress and development of all pupils (p.72). In this section the Code suggests that needs are able to be identified by assessing pupil progress, which it says may be measured against the attainment gap between pupils and their peers. This statement aligns with our arguments in this response.
We are concerned,should national attainment levels in Primary education be removed,about how this attainment gap will be effectively measured within schools and more significantly, when pupils transfer between schools. The Department’s draft Code itself suggests that needs will more difficult to identify if there is not a consistent framework for measuring pupil progress from one school to another. Below, we list the reasons why this is the case:
- We recognise the fact that National Curriculum levels and sub levels, P scales, and level descriptors are not without their flaws and in particular, developmental stages of learning were not always accurately represented. However, the current system gives a clear framework to schools and teachers, from which they can develop the school curriculum of their choice to address those Programmes of Study. It allows all children and especially those with SEN/SLCN to see their progression, teachers to plan such progression and parents to understand it. We would suggest enhancing these so that they more efficiently do the job they were intended to do
- The existing Framework has given us a nationally recognised, consistent and comparable way of making judgements of attainment and of measuring and demonstrating progress meaning that children and young people with SEN have a level playing field. This has the effect of raising expectations of pupils and enabling them to be included in the processes the school operates for all pupils.Levels of progression within assessment support children in seeing what the next small step is and how they can achieve it. This is particularly important for pupils with SEN when an emphasis should be placed on the progress a pupil has made rather than where they stand in the class league, with the consequent damaging impact on a potential fragile self esteem and their motivation to learn[2].
- Having national levels and assessment also provides the framework for Assessment for Learning which ensures pupil involvement in their own learning, is supportive of good teaching practice and builds on learning theory such as that proposed by Bruner and Vygotsky. The meta-cognitive skills underpinning this are necessary for achieving the deeper learning needed for understanding, rather than surface learning that is the potential outcome of the current recommendations. Both feedback and metacognition have been recently identified in the DfE funded Educational Endowment Foundation Toolkit as the two most impactfuland cost-efficient interventions to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.[3]. However, with the current recommendations, there will be no consistent framework within which to support or capture these two key approaches for teachers, resulting in disparate and inconsistent approaches across our educational provision.
- Summative end of key stage assessment sets a high bar, which is clearly an admirable goal. However, the current recommendations are likely to result in a simple pass/fail that does not encourage motivation for learning or support learningfor pupils with SEN. What happens if pupils fail? To motivate and engage, we need to be able to reward tangible small steps of progress as students build their attainment goals. The proposed changes represent diagnostic testing rather than a system which supports children’s learning.
- Children with SLCN need specific teaching of the foundation knowledge and skills to reach the next level. The new curriculum does not support teachers or pupils to identify what this will look like for spoken language, giving no guidance or specificity in the programme of what to expect and how to develop these key skills. The removal of levels and focus on end of key stage tests is likely to encourage a focus on surface knowledge acquisition rather than deeper learning and skills.
- The combination of these two factors is hugely challenging for ensuring progression and attainment in children with SLCN; these children don’t develop reflective skills by themselves as they are language dependent, so the lack of levels to support understanding of progression further disadvantages these pupils.
- Despite the fact that the existing levels are not necessarily developmental in their progression, they none the less provide an important breakdown. Breaking down spoken language into its component parts and into levels is vital to show that speech, language and communication (SLC) skills do develop throughout a pupil’s school life,and also that they are critical in other subject areas. This supports parents in their understanding, teachers in their teaching and pupils in their planning for development. Without this breakdown of skills and an additional focus in assessment on acquisition of knowledge, there is a danger that children’s SLCN will not be recognised and assumptions made of a general low level of ability, rather than specific language impairments. This will result in lowering of expectations, insufficient targeted support at the right levels and poorer outcomes for these children, the opposite of what the new guidelines are aiming for.
- Recent research[4]and our own experience,tell us that schools and teachers find it difficultto know how to judge pupils’ progress in spoken language[5]and yet the proposed system depends on them being able to do this. The risk is unintentional inflation of speaking and listening outcomes by teaching staff, resulting in under identification of children with SLCN and potential impact of poor language on literacy and attainment as they progress through school. There is much evidence on the impact of poor language and literacy attainment on all core and other subjects within school.[6][7][8]
- The argument that parents don’t understand level descriptors is very easily refuted; schools have worked hard to explain levels to parents and children themselves are very good at translating their progression into easily digestible information for parents. Furthermore, we are entering a phase where parents themselves have been through an education system based on levels, so if we are taking a long term view, there would be an understanding that parents will only get better at understanding the current system, rather than introducing something new and of no use to support children’s learning.
- It is still unclear exactly what and how schools will report toparents; will parents continue to receive feedback around their child’s progression or will they just receive decile scores? If it is solely the pass/fail end of key stage assessments and decile scores, it is almost impossible to see how this information would be useful to parents in order to support their child’s ongoing learning and engagement.
- It is particularly difficult to see and understand what this will look like for parents of children with SEN/SLCN. It is likely that many children with SEN/SLCN will not pass end of key stage tests, leaving both parents and their children demotivated and unclear of next steps, other than to fail the following end of key stage tests.
- There is no way of accounting for strengths of individual children in this system, for example, children with specific language impairment will be very likely to fail phonics and grammar items within the English prescriptive content; it is difficult to see what good progress will look like for these children and almost impossible to see how their strengths in educational progression will be captured in this system. It’s is a potential disaster for these children, with nothing really to work towards and no recognition of the areas where they are able and successful.
- Evidence suggests children do well when they are motivated to learn and have a clear idea of their educational progression and next steps; the risk with the new system is not only to take away this clarity of progression, but to write off children very early in the school career, demotivating both them and their parents.
We need a comprehensive, coherent, consistent and cohesive national curriculum and assessment system, built on a strong evidenced foundation. According to best evidence and to educational practice, the proposals as they stand will significantly undermine that being achieved.
2a) What other good examples of assessment practice we can share more widely?
/ Comments:We would like to see a fair and equitable system introduced for assessment and measuring progress and would encourage Ministers to look at the systems recommended by the Better Communication Research Programme as a way of achieving that for speech, language and communication[9].We have this research evidence and examples of our own work[10] where tracking and monitoring children using developmentally accurate profiles can not only support identification of children with additional needs, but can help teaching staff to monitor progression and scaffold children’s learning more effectively
The Government’s own Advisory Group[11] also highlighted the importance of spoken language for learning across the curriculum and made some recommendations on how to support and track these skills.
We need to learn from existing practice in terms of assessment, particularly for an area such as speech, language and communication. Whilst we recognise the Government’s desire to not over-prescribe and to give teachers the freedom to use the most appropriate pedagogy for their pupils, we also know that teachers themselves express a lack of confidence in knowing how to support children with SLCN[12]and that training and guidance is required[13], particularly when the Indicative Code of Practice highlights that ‘all teachers are teachers of SEN’.
We also know that SLCN is a type of SEN which is significantly under identified across all ages and stages[14], impacting on pupil outcomes and therefore national standards.
Considering these issues, it is vital to share guidance on assessment practice for pupils with SLCN. The Communication Trust has case studies from its member organisations which demonstrate best practice in terms of assessment and monitoring of SLC and identification of SLCN and highlight the sorts of innovation that can bloom within a Framework of development and achievement.
We are concerned about the Department’s intention to allow schools to develop their own assessment models in that it may become extremely difficult, or almost impossible to provide simple generic guidance for pupils with SLCN as every assessment could in theory be idiosyncratic to that school. This also has the impact of losing a structure to compare progress more widely (the ‘benchmarking’ described as necessary by Lord Bew) leading to real difficulty in determining what constitutes good progress for children across the SEN spectrum. Having no national benchmarking makes determining such parameters for these groups of children almost impossible, often leading to, as happened in the past, low expectations.
We have gathered a range of examples from our Consortium members on this issue.
Two main scenarios have emergedas recurring examples from The Symbol Trust:
- Where students have not achieved required levels on school assessments but that without additional support, assessment and discussion teachers have not known the appropriate level, or way, in which to break down the learning steps and goals for that pupil.
- Where students have achieved high scores on a particular task e.g. a phonic reading skills task and been thought to have no learning needs but have subsequently failed to progress as expected. Without further and more detailed individual assessment the student’s language comprehension difficulties had not been revealed and therefore targeted.
In our experience, training and development in SLC can develop school staff ability to identify language difficulties and to measure progress in SLC.
I CAN’s Talk programmes provide a structure, strategies and measures for teachers to develop communication supportive practice across the curriculum. These aim to equip teachers with the skills to recognise, promote and develop positive speaking and listening in the classroom / in students. These strategies support the speaking and listening skills of individual students.
Through Primary Talk & Talk Boost training sessions, staff have been supported to use the Primary Language Development poster, the TCT Progression Tool and (in a few schools) the Primary Language Profiling tool (a simplified version of the poster).
These have proved to be useful tools for measuring progress. The approach to training; an action learning approach to focus on outcomes at very specific level e.g. changes to number of new words used, number of children volunteering answers in class discussion etc. supports staff to see practical changes to children’s language in the classroom.
2b) Is there additional support we can provide for schools?