valuing assessment

As part of a middle leadership course I am doing I wrote this blog post about my experience. As its far to early and I cant sleep I thought I would share it with you.

Through my action research project I started off looking at how pupils in year 3 were seeming to make little or no progressduring the year. This was particuarly true in literacy. A culture of blaming the previous teacher or the ks1 SATs was common. The general feeling was that children were making progress however it was not being demonstrated by the assessment. Is that through our own school assessment practise? Was the assessment in year 2 accurate?

There seemed more questions than answers when I first started this action research. I soon found I was not alone. However we are not an infant- junior school where there is much documented evidence about this problem... year 2 and 3 are even in the same building working alongside each other all year. As the middle leader in charge of year 2 and 3 I felt some responsibility both for the accuracy of the year 2 and year 3 teachers results. We had excellent teachers, working from comparable good planning and yet there is this inconsitency. This document records my initial thoughts and ideas as for how I could go about investigating and researching the root of the project, my action plan (which was very much a working document) and my findings.

I now feel we are in a much better, healthier place where year 3 teachers know that their hard work is being recognised and, fingers crossed, we should see healthier results from year 2 and 3 for the next year. On a personal level I feel like a much stronger, supportive leader. I have developed much greater skills in assessment and moderation. I recognise the need to come alongside people in order to support them in something that is challenging.

To realise the need to take on board managing the teaching assistants more effectively and ensure that they are accountable for the interventions that they lead. However that is not just about looking back at the end of 6 weeks and looking for progress but about week by week being part of discussions about the small successes they make and celebrating them with them. To make time to do this and encourage all staff to share in pupils learning is what makes my job worthwhile.

Ok it may not change the whole world but it will certainly change the quality of life and job satisfaction for the teachers and TAs I work alongside.

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