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GL Assessment is the leading provider of formative assessments
to UK schools.
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We specialise in literacy, numeracy, reasoning and attitudinal
assessments, including assessments that support children with
Additional Learning Needs (ALN). We have relationships with
over two thirds of primary and secondary schools in Wales and we
have recently acquired Lucid Research, a specialist provider of
assessments for children with ALN. Tests are nationally
standardised, giving measures such as standard age scores, and
include parental reporting where appropriate.
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We have a distinct philosophy of good assessment practice.
We believe in a ‘whole pupil’ approach, examining
a child’s attitude, ability and attainment to provide a
complete understanding of their needs. This enables schools
to get to know each pupil as an individual, appreciating their
strengths, identifying areas where they might need support and
intervention, and removing any obstacles that are impacting
negatively on attainment. Crucially, this philosophy places
the individual pupil at the heart of a school’s programme of
assessment.
Introduction: The need for the Bill to encourage good
assessment practice
GL Assessment welcomes the Bill’s focus on an
“integrated, collaborative, process of assessment, planning
and monitoring which facilitates early and timely
intervention”. Teacher assessment will form the
foundation of this process as teachers and early years
professionals are best placed to observe behaviour and performance
that may be indicative of additional learning needs. It is
therefore crucial that teachers are well versed in good assessment
practice.
However, the Donaldson Report identified assessment and
professional development relating to assessment as a particular
weakness of the Welsh education system. The Committee should
explore further how the Department for Education and Skills’
plans to support the development of good assessment practice to
fully realise the aims of the Bill.
Below is what we consider to be best practice in the use of
formative assessments to identify and support pupils with ALN.
The progress of pupils with ALN should be continually
tracked, appropriate educational interventions used to raise
attainment, and a clear assessment made as to the effective of such
interventions. Formative assessments have a crucial role to play
throughout this process.
Identifying pupils with low ability: early
intervention
Formative assessments are a valuable tool in the process of
early identification of those with additional learning needs.
Importantly, assessments such as those produced by GL Assessment
and Lucid Research, are age standardised, meaning that low
attainment due to a summer birth date will not be misidentified as
being caused by ALN.
It is crucial that special educational needs are identified
during early years and Key Stage 1. If these issues are not
addressed they can become entrenched and prove much harder to
tackle later on.
In 2011, the Centre for Reading and Language at the University
of York published research which was conducted as part of the
standardisation of our York Assessment of Reading for
Comprehension (YARC). It highlighted problems with the current
process of identifying pupils with reading difficulties within
primary and secondary schools. The study found that some
students in every secondary school year group were identified with
a reading age of 6 or 7 years and a substantial proportion of
pupils who experience reading difficulties were not identified on
the school’s SEN/ALN Register. The report said:
“The most striking finding is the under-reporting of
children with significant reading difficulties. If half of children
with reading difficulties are not on the SEN Register by Year 7,
this suggests to me that it’s unlikely that their reading
problems will be attended to during their secondary
schooling.”
“The data we collected are striking in showing that in
each year group, there are substantial numbers of children with
significant reading difficulties, many reading below the 7-year
level. This finding underlines the fact that it is critical
to identify children at risk of reading difficulties early,
certainly well before secondary school, and for appropriate
interventions to be put in place.”
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Maximising pupil attainment: continuous
assessment
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Clearly every school must work to maximise the attainment of
pupils with ALN. Formative assessments can play an important role
in helping these pupils exceed expectations.
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To take one example, our New Group Reading Test (NGRT)
supports teachers in monitoring pupils’ ability to read and
how well they understand what they are reading. These
assessments provide teachers with a comprehensive overview of a
pupil’s reading and comprehension ability while providing a
wealth of diagnostic information identifying areas where they may
be experiencing difficulties.
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Torfaen Local Authority recently adopted the NGRT to help
raise standards across its 33 schools after an inspection report
stated that performance in secondary schools was among the lowest
in Wales on four of the five main indicators set by the Welsh
Government.
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Torfaen decided that teachers needed an additional, reliable
and independent benchmark to inform their judgements regarding
pupil progress and ALN, and introduced the New Group Reading Test
across the Local Authority. The core objectives were to
support teachers’ own assessment, to provide important
diagnostic information that would help to inform teaching, and to
provide an additional means to identify children with ALN. As
Sharon Davies, Torfaen’s Head of Learning,
explains:
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“We believe that of our schools should have hard
evidence on which to base their target-setting. We need to have a
robust benchmark and we need to be outcome driven. How can you
monitor progress effectively if you don’t have a clear
starting point? This is what NGRT gives us. It’s a
highly valuable check and balance. We decided to administer NGRT in
January 2015 so that we could use the data as mid-year marker, with
the National Tests every summer. We now know where our weaknesses
are and how we can address them sooner than we could
before.”
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Most schools in Torfaen chose to use the digital version of
NGRT, which is also adaptive; in other words, children see
different questions depending on how they move through the test. As
Sharon explains:
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“Using the digital version of the assessment gave
children confidence. When you have a child with an Additional
Learning Need or a child with a lower ability, their confidence can
get easily knocked. With the questions changing according to their
capacity to answer the questions, it’s a comfortable journey
for them – they’re not aware that they are doing
different questions.”
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“We need to make sure we’re doing everything we
can for our learners, otherwise we’re not being fair to them.
They need more – and this is what we’re continually
aiming for.”
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The diagnostic information and narrative reports has indeed
meant that NGRT has enabled the LA to identify children who should
have been on the SEN Register and put the relevant interventions in
place.
Supporting children with Additional Learning Needs
When a young person demonstrates poor literacy or numeracy
skills, tests can be used to identify if they in fact have a
learning disability. Assessments such as GL
Assessment’s Dyslexia Screener and Lucid
Research’s Rapid Dyslexia Screener can identify
dyslexic tendencies in young people from the age of four upwards.
The screeners recommend intervention strategies and can play
an important part in helping both specialist and non-specialist
teachers distinguish between those individuals who have poor maths
or literacy attainment and those whose difficulties are associated
with dyscalculia or dyslexia.
Many teachers are uneasy about applying diagnostic labels at
an early age, and Lucid has developed assessments that do not
demand that the label ‘dyslexia’ is used. For
example, its Cognitive Profiling System enables teachers to
understand the cognitive limitations that lie behind dyslexia in
children aged four to eight and to tackle these directly without
needing to be concerned about labels unless they choose to.
The Lucid Assessment System for Schools continues this
process for ages 8-15. These assessments enable teachers to
identify potential problems before they even register a pattern of
difficulty and therefore structure a suitable support programme for
use in class before learning issues become established.
Conclusion
GL Assessment welcomes the Bill’s focus on improving the
means by which pupils with ALN are identified and supported.
The use of appropriate formative assessments to facilitate
this will be a vital aspect of this process. However, with
the Donaldson Review having identified the use of assessments as an
area requiring improvement, we think that it is important that the
Committee scrutinise how the Welsh Government proposes to improve
assessment practice to mirror the changes proposed by this piece of
legislation.
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