Assessment and Reporting

Changes to Key Stage 3 Assessment and Reporting: 2023

Dear Parents and Carers, 

This letter sets out the adjustments that we have made to our Assessment and Reporting systems this year. We hope that these changes will help you to understand more about our curriculum and about your child’s individual learning experience at The Marlborough School.

Curriculum

Our Marlborough School Curriculum is the result of careful and thoughtful planning and sequencing to ensure that all our students are taught an ambitious and stimulating curriculum that prepares them for further study and helps them to understand the world around them.

Each unit of work has a detailed Unit Overview document, which is included in the school report. This sets out the core knowledge and skills that we expect students to secure, as well as details on the nature of assessment in each subject. 

Assessment

We carefully plan formative and summative assessments, so that we can test whether students have secured these specified and carefully selected core knowledge and skills. Frequent, low stakes formative assessments are planned throughout the topic to help teachers respond to any gaps in pupils’ understanding, by re-teaching and allowing pupils time to practise questions or work that they have found more challenging. Homework is largely designed to help students secure the core knowledge that they need in each subject. 

More formal, summative assessments also occur twice a year. The results of these assessments are shared with you as part of the assessment and reporting process. 

Assessment and Reporting

We wanted to make the link between curriculum and assessment more explicit in our communication with families. This has led to the changes that I will outline below. Essentially, as a result of our careful planning, our curriculum is the progression model. What this means is that if pupils are securing the planned curriculum throughout KS3, they are highly likely to be successful at GCSE and beyond.

 Here is a summary of the information you will receive in your child’s report:

• A % score based on a formal assessment;  

• A % cohort average for this assessment;

• A description of ‘curriculum security’ as described below;

• A Ready to Learn score (1-5), indicating the student’s overall attitude to learning.

Curriculum Security Descriptors

• We have identified 4 bands to describe the extent to which pupils have successfully grasped the content of the taught curriculum. This overall judgement will take into account assessment performance, but may also include classwork. 

• We have included a broad GCSE equivalent in the information.

The bands and their descriptions are as follows:

Please take some time to familiarise yourself with the new format of report and to look at the Unit Overviews. We hope this will allow you to have richer conversations with your child about what they have been learning.

If you have any feedback on the new format, or any comments or questions more generally, please do not hesitate to contact me directly: alexanderl@themarlboroughschool.org 

Yours faithfully,

Ms Lindsey Alexander

Deputy Headteacher