This is what the local authority have said about our assessment:

 “The school has a well-established and comprehensive approach to assessment and progress tracking. Within this, leaders are able to identify individual pupils who are at risk of not achieving their targets and quickly put in place resources and interventions to ameliorate”.

Assessment is a tool that helps us to know the following things:

Our curriculum is designed to effectively support pupils who have a range of disabilities and learning difficulties. We are regularly monitoring the content of our curriculum in the light of what our assessment data tells us, for example, we have changed the way we teach and assess writing. Our pupils’ scores are better when they use a computer to write rather than struggle to learn to use a pen to put their ideas on paper. The results for pupil engagement levels which we are required by the government to assess are very encouraging and show that our curriculum is motivating and supporting our pupils to learn. 78% of pupils are engaged and improving their engagement all the time. We support pupils who are struggling with engagement and if you look at last year’s graph, the figures for engagement are improved over time

To check on individual pupil progress. We don’t want our pupils to be labelled with a word. We use colours: Red = Cause for immediate concern Amber= require constant monitoring Green = Progress as expected Blue = More progress than expected. Often there are factors in a child’s life such as family circumstances, illness or mental health issues that affect their progress. This type of barrier is our responsibility to try to overcome. We hold a case study on each pupil which will record these factors and any extra support we have put in to mitigate it. If you check our graphs to see progress against individual education plan targets (EHCPs), you will see we are very good at keeping the personal progress of the pupils high. 87% of our pupils achieved more than 51 percent of their targets with 22% of those having achieved every target set.

A note of caution

Numbers give us a clear picture of progress and potential problems that pupils might be having with their learning. However, they don’t tell us if our pupils are happy. For that we make relationships, look at their body language, talk to them, look at their faces and provide them with the richest and most fulfilling environment we can offer. That is what you will see first when you enter our building and it says much more about our school than graphs.