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Assessment

THE PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE OF ASSESSMENT

Assessment is the process of obtaining, analysing and interpreting evidence for use by both students and teachers to enable the review, planning and improvement of learning. It is fully integrated with the delivery of the curriculum and is an essential component of effective practice.
Assessment lets our students see what progress they are making and provides their teachers and the school with accurate and timely information which assists us to plan how to help students make further progress and reward them for the improvements they make.
Assessment enables us to report information to parents/carers, as well as information to help older children make choices about the examination courses they will follow and the qualifications and future careers they will seek.
Assessment helps us to set targets for the future by consistently measuring our students’ performance. We are constantly reviewing our school provision because we strive to provide the best possible service to our community.

UNDERSTANDING OUR ASSESSMENTS

Assessment at The Matthew Arnold School comprises of the following types of assessments:

Assessment for Learning (Formative assessment that takes place in every lesson)
Assessment Points
Progress Checks
End of Year Examinations/Mock Examinations

All students will complete either an Assessment Point or a Progress Check every half term

ASSESSMENT POINTS

These assessments will assess what has been taught within the topic or the curriculum to date and are pre-planned within the subjects’ curriculum. These assessments will support the development of student's examination skills over time and subjects will pause their curriculum delivery in preparation to focus on effective revision techniques beforehand. Outcomes will be collated and shared with parents and carers.

PROGRESS CHECKS

This is a low stakes test, identifying gaps in a student's knowledge and to embed the knowledge learnt through teachers targeting areas for immediate improvement and celebrating areas of strength. These will always be teacher marked and questions that are frequently incorrectly answered will prompt a review of the teaching of that content. They should also form areas of focus for future lessons to develop the student's capacity to store and retrieve accurate information. Outcomes will be recorded internally to help plan student interventions.

END OF YEAR EXAMINATIONS

Students in Years 7-10 will sit an end of year holistic assessment ‘End of Year Examination’, assessing the content from that year’s academic subject curriculum. This is in addition to their regular Assessment Point and Progress Checks. These will take place during normal timetabled subject lessons and will be timetabled during a specific week. Subjects will pause their curriculum delivery in preparation to focus on effective revision techniques beforehand. The examinations will be marked by the class teacher, moderated within the department, and an attainment level will be assigned to the level the student. Years 7-9 this will be in respect to the student's band expectation. In Year 10 this will be a Current Working at Grade and a Predicted Grade (These are estimations based on the quality of their classwork, assessments and overall progress)

MOCK EXAMINATIONS

Students in Year 11 will participate in two mock examination sittings. These where appropriate will use Vocational or GCSE examination material. Subjects will pause their curriculum delivery in preparation to focus on effective revision techniques beforehand. The outcomes will enable us to see how much our students have developed over the full range of skills in each subject and how much they have developed their overall subject knowledge. The outcomes will inform us of what students may benefit from targeted intervention.

ASSESSMENT POINTS AND ACADEMIC REPORTS

Academic reports will be generated three times a year following each Assessment Point (AP1, AP2 and AP3) and a copy will be emailed to with parents and carers. Parents’ evenings will be strategically placed for each year group where students and parents can meet with their child’s subject teachers to discuss their attainment and agree on targets for improvement. For all year groups, reports will indicate the attainment that the student has made within each of their subjects along with other key information.

KEY STAGE 3

At Key Stage 3 all our students sit the GL CAT4 Cognitive Abilities Test and New Group Reading Tests (NGRT). The reason for these assessments is to provide the school with further information on each student’s current level of attainment against the national average. This information also supports our teachers’ professional judgement on the attainment that is generated through classwork, homework and internal assessments. These assessments form part of a student's profile, along with their Key Stage 2 outcomes and feeder school transfer information. This information will assist in the identification of those students who require intervention, SEND provision, subject setting, GCSE options and establishing targets for the end of Key Stage 4.

BANDING

In Years 7-9, students are placed into bands based on their scores from Key Stage 2 SAT results and the cognitive ability tests (CATs) taken in the Autumn term of Year 7.

Students may move between the bands; they are not fixed. Where a student is consistently working above the band, it will be adjusted. The bands loosely correlate to GCSE outcomes:

Attainment Board	Expected GCSE Outcome
Mastery	7-9
Securing	5-7
Progressing	3-5

Key Stage 3 Assessment Point data will generate ‘Attainment’ data for each student within each subject, which will be reported to the student and their parents/carers in relation to the students Banding Expectation.

Working towards target	Your child might not have met the criteria of skills to be within the band but is working towards it. They are not yet making enough progress to be in the band.
Expected to meet target	Your child is working within the band and making the progress expected to end Key Stage 3 within the band.
Exceeding target	Your child is progressing very well and working beyond what the baseline tests would suggest.

ATTITUDE TO LEARNING

In addition to a student’s attainment, the following scale of Excellent, Good, Need’s to improve and Below expectation will be used to measure student attitude to learning in relation to behaviour, effort and homework

Grade	Behaviour	Effort	Homework
Excellent	Student shows excellent concentration, rarely off task, and a commitment to improve their learning is consistently shown.	Student takes great pride in their work and work is always completed to a high standard.	Student always completes homework on time and strives to ensure the quality of their work is to a high standard.
Good	Student shows good concentration in class and overall shows a desire to achieve in their learning.	Student shows good effort in most of their tasks and work is usually completed to a good standard.	Student completes homework on time and to an expected standard in their work.
Needs to improve	Student needs to follow instructions given by teacher and ensure there is full engagement during their learning time.	Student needs to work harder and focus more in their lessons and produce work that is of consistency in quality.	Student needs to ensure homework is completed by the given deadlines all the time and to the expected standard.
Below expectation	Student needs to be more cooperative and not be involved in disruptive learning behaviour within their lessons	Student needs to not give up too easily and produce work that shows thought and care about their learning	Student needs to arrive to lesson prepared for learning and ensure homework is completed to expected standard.

KEY DATES

Date	Event
6th - 10th October 2025	Assessment Point 1
1st - 5th December 2025	Progress Check 1
19th - 23rd January 2026	Assessment Point 2
16th - 20th March 2026	Progress Check 2
4th - 8th May 2026	Progress Check 3
8th - 12th June 2026	Assessment Point 3 / End of Year Exams

KEY STAGE 4

GCSE TARGET GRADE

All our students at The Matthew Arnold School will set an aspirational target grade. This target is based on internal tests completed in Year 7 and Year 10. These targets serve as a baseline for how your child should perform in their GCSE examinations. They are designed to be challenging yet achievable, encouraging students to strive for their best.

MOCK EXAM GRADE

Current Working at Grade: The level of attainment that the student achieved in their most recent mock examinations. This grade provides a snapshot of their current performance and helps identify areas where they may need additional support or improvement.

Predicted Grade: These estimations are based on the quality of their classwork, assessments, and overall progress throughout the year. The predicted grade reflects the teacher's professional judgement of the student's potential performance in their final exams.

It is possible that the ‘Predicted Grade’ could change after each mock examination series, as it will be dependent upon student performance at that moment in time.