Elmer1 Posted June 10, 2015 Posted June 10, 2015 Interested to know what others out there are doing with regards to assessment at KS3 and the removal of levels. Anyone care to share?
bobsmith Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 Well I was going to use the new 1-9 GCSE grades adapted for each year group - however having spent hours reading all the assessment without levels posts in the various blogs I'm starting to doubt a little. The SIMS program of study stuff coming out this summer looks promising, the inestimable Mr. Pott has written a bunch of stuff about it here: Introduction to Programme of Study marksheets | School Analytics Ltd
MattMitchell Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 I think a lot of schools are replacing levels with another grade/level system that's very similar, which is really like replacing feet and inches with metres and centimetres. The real benefit of AWoL is when it allows schools to take a new approach to assessment, and this is often lacking in a lot of implementations at the moment.
Elmer1 Posted June 12, 2015 Author Posted June 12, 2015 Thanks to you both for replying - I've seen various assessment methods proposed which all have benefits but it's how the data is recorded and reported on. All of the schools I work with use SIMS so they don't really want to purchase yet another piece of software to record in and for what SIMS costs each year you want to try and get as much out of it as possible. That said you don't want your assessment dictated by your MIS if it doesn't work for you. My main concern with the SIMS offering is that it's not customisable (yet!). I have seen methods which use the 1 - 9 scale mapped back across KS3 but as far as I'm aware it would be impossible to implement this in SIMS at this stage.
bobsmith Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 1-9 mapped back across is always possible in SIMS, it's just a lookup essentially if you wanted to go down that route. All you need to pull it off is some kind of summative result entered by teachers which you can then use a lookup to convert to the new system. Whether it has any merit is the only issue. I spent 10 years using Facility CMIS before moving to SIMS in november and starting my new job in a SIMS school this January - for all my complaints about SIMS - it DOES do assessment quite well and is highly customisable. There is no real need to use an external assessment system unless you're doing something totally left field.
Paradoxism Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 We are looking at the same for next year, and my current instinct is to have 1-9 from the start of KS3 and track it across all year groups. To replace levels with another grading system which then just gets us through KS3 seems to reinvent the levels wheel for no extra benefit. Am hoping that SIMS Progress Grids can be used to track the progress against objectives and then convert to grades. The main issue is that even the teaching staff don't know how they are to track progress for their new curriculums so whatever we do will be an organic development! Hoping that the government doesn't decide that water is old fashioned technology - then take it away without giving us any advice on what to replace it with!
Paradoxism Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 And MattMitchell - don't forget that the teaching staff are being told they have to get hard evidence for any 'levels' that they give to students no matter what system is in place. With some of the mastery curriculum developments coming out it can be hard to evidence exactly which skills are secure / developing etc. No wonder staff are keen to keep traditional assessment based systems
Elmer1 Posted June 12, 2015 Author Posted June 12, 2015 Thanks again to all for replying. I've used SIMS for many years so I know that the main assessment manager module is highly customisable but here I'm referring to the new Programme of Study marksheets/grids that are already out for primary but yet to be released for Secondary (unless I've missed something!) They look to use the Emerging, Developing, Securing, Mastering "grades" against national curriculum statements but if we wanted to customise to use with a 1-9 scale I'm not sure it's doable yet. If anyone knows differently then please do tell.
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