We carry out regular assessments with our students throughout their time with us and believe that it’s important that parents also have an overview of what we will be assessing and feeding back to them during the five years their children will spend at Icknield. Most of our assessment and feedback is informal and is fed back verbally as close as possible to the time the student has completed some work. However, some assessments are more formal. We, therefore, provide you with some calendars to help make this process as clear as possible.
At Key Stage 3, twice per year, teachers will judge and report the standard of students’ work across the preceding half year. All work completed in this time period will be considered. The three judgements the teachers can give are:
The judgements will be shared at the following times:
|
|
Judgement 1 |
Judgement 2 |
|
Year 7 |
December |
May |
|
Year 8 |
February |
July |
|
Year 9 |
February |
July |
To help students to understand what the expected standard is, teachers will share descriptions for each of the units of work studied. An example, from Maths, can be seen below:
Additionally, in some subjects (En, Ma, Sc, Ge, Hi, Fr, Sp), students take assessments twice per year. These take place in class and are at least 40 minutes long for each subject. They are held under test conditions and students don’t have access to previous work.
These assessments will take place in the first week of following half terms:
|
|
Assessment 1 |
Assessment 2 |
|
Year 7 |
Half Term 2 |
Half Term 5 |
|
Year 8 |
Half Term 3 |
Half Term 6 |
|
Year 9 |
Half Term 3 |
Half Term 6 |
Performance in these assessments will be reported as a standardised score. This means a score of 100 will be average for the year and scores will typically range from 70 to 130.
At Key Stage 4, most GCSE courses are assessed through exams at the end of the course. There are a small number that include non-examined assessments (coursework). Details about these can be found in the Guided Choices booklet.
To help to prepare students for these assessments, we run a series of mock exam windows throughout Year 10 and Year 11 in which students complete practice exams for all of their examined subjects. The table below shows the exams that take place.
|
When? |
What? |
Where? |
|
Year 10 |
Practice exams up to 1 hour in length |
Normal classrooms |
|
Year 10 |
Practice exams - full length |
Sports Hall |
|
Year 11 |
Practice exams – full length |
Sports Hall |
After each of these exam series, teachers will communicate the % score to parents along with a prediction for which grade they think students are going to receive at the end of the course.
