Hundreds of years ago I worked with students on a school newspaper at toot Hill Comp in Notts. The paper was unofficial and frowned upon by the management, as were most things I did. However, many students got a great deal from it. one thing we all had a go at was translating words into pictures. Predating the film Ted by several years, we came up with a variety of ...ted images. I have redrawn some below - thanks to Jules Hussey, Paul Metcalfe, James Campbell and his brother Eddie (I think- sorry if it isn't your name). More to come.  Do try your own.

Taking moderation to extremes

or

What we have learned about KS2 writing and assessment in 2016

Like a portakabin in the playground, the ‘interim’ assessment criteria for KS1 and 2 writing look likely to be in use indefinitely. Although the STA website emphasises that the 2017 frameworks are for one year only, they said that was the case for 2016, yet here they are again, unchanged and unaffected by the controversy that surrounded their birth.  Whatever one thinks of the descriptors, this probably counts as a blessing, as, for 2016 -17, we begin the year with an idea of how we have to assess our pupils’ writing; something we lacked for most of 2015-16. We also have the added benefit, dubious though it may be, of experience, having applied the criteria during the summer assessment season.  As someone with responsibility for overseeing KS2 writing moderation in 2016 and going into several schools to monitor, challenge and support the process, I thought it might be useful to share a few thoughts, informed by my own observations and by the feedback received from our esteemed moderators at both KS2 and KS1.

Context and controversy

The interim frameworks were rolled out in September 2015 and were supplemented by exemplification materials which finally appeared around Christmas.  There was resistance to the exemplification materials, the criteria and the timescale for assessment (May 22^nd given as deadline for writing assessment at KS2 and 13^th June for KS1) which led to grudging changes to assessment and reporting arrangements (“for this year only”) in March 2016. The increased demand and ‘perfect fit’ approach were defended as part of a commitment to higher standards, with ‘robustness and fairness’ advanced as reasons for the early deadlines. The exemplification materials were also defended but the compulsion to use them, along with the accompanying tick-sheets that offered assistance in applying the criteria, was removed. Local Authorities and moderators were left in the middle somewhat. They had an obligation to ensure that assessment in the schools being sampled was robust and that criteria were applied consistently. Original plans were binned. Professional dialogue was reinstated, having been discarded in favour of a more authoritarian ‘scrutiny’, and moderators retrained to make them aware that schools couldn’t be required to submit assessments in advance of a visit (no matter that this actually accelerated and improved the process) and didn’t have to use the tick-sheets and exemplification, though moderators would. Fortunately for us, we had kept schools abreast of all the changes and had involved them throughout. Our moderators are practising teachers drawn from several schools and collectively, and often individually, possessed of vast experience and expertise. As a result, the majority of schools were prepared to submit their assessments in advance and were welcoming and hospitable to moderators who, as had always been the case in the past, were there as professional colleagues, helping them to ensure their assessments were accurate, no matter what they thought of the strictures and criteria imposed upon them.

The Frameworks and Exemplification

The writing framework at KS1 and KS2 is really the GPS test in another form. The descriptors, whether bulleted or dropped into a table for ticking, mention purpose and audience but are simply a list of grammatical features that have to be included to meet the expected standard, whether purpose, audience and context require them or not. The attempt, of course, is to replace the old ‘best fit’ approach where assessors make a judgement about the qualities of a collection of writing against a prose descriptor (or, with the now defunct APP grids, several prose descriptors) and arrive at a grade level or standard.  The ‘best fit’ approach is mistrusted because its descriptors are open to interpretation and, even with levels and sub-levels, it provides only a broad idea or approximation of how capable a writer the child is. It does not guarantee ‘mastery’ of each and every attribute. A tick-list (what some commentators like to refer to as the ‘perfect fit’ approach, with its suggestion of rigour and precision), ostensibly details what a child can or has to do, but does not evaluate effectiveness or quality. The approach is an abandonment of much past practice including that of former Tory governments, as is illustrated by this from the Cox Report of 1989:

The main principle is that the secretarial aspect should not be allowed to predominate in the assessment while the more complex aspects of composition are ignored. It is evident that a child may be a poor speller, but write well-structured and interesting stories, or be a good speller, but write badly structured and boring stories. (1)

            The dismay that many teachers felt on seeing the criteria and the exemplification was expressed very clearly across social media with Mike Rosen, amongst others, railing against this highly reductive approach and the view that “good writing can be defined or measured by using a criterion like ‘does this passage include an embedded relative clause’”.(2) Arguably, the criteria simply ask for the application of grammatical knowledge and ‘secretarial skills’ (or ‘technical skills’, depending upon one’s ideological frame perhaps) but, as Rosen and others ask, is this a viable or useful definition of writing for purpose and audience when there is nothing to suggest that successful address to these principles is of any value? The creators of the exemplification materials (the adults, not the children whose work has been commandeered) seem to be aware of the conflict and difficulty. Their commentaries included sections on ‘composition and effect’, which were the areas which, in the days of writing tests and level descriptors, gained most marks. Their comments are pointless in assessment terms though, and do not address anything in the framework. They deal with ‘complex aspects of composition’ and elements which actually are mentioned in the current national curriculum, such as ‘fluency’, enjoyment and understanding of language’, ‘effectiveness as well as competence’ and ‘conscious control’ but these aspects do not figure in the descriptors.

There were a few prosaic and pragmatic problems encountered with the tick boxes and bullet points of the framework. The ‘perfect fit’ descriptors often conflated more than one skill or attribute. Across a range of work teachers and moderators had to find children “using present and past tense mostly correctly and consistently” (KS1) or “using passive and modal verbs mostly appropriately” (KS2). Often of course, this did not occur simultaneously and a single tick or highlighter stroke could not convey whether the statement had been met or not. Trying to judge whether a child had met the standard for the single bullet point, “using inverted commas, commas for clarity, and punctuation for parenthesis mostly correctly, and making some correct use of semi-colons, dashes, colons and hyphens” (KS2) caused mild apoplexy. A single tick, or the alternative approach of annotating the work, disingenuously proposed by the then Education Secretary, could not usefully cover the entirety of this descriptor and it had to be disaggregated. Ironically, we had to construct lengthier tick lists than those provided by STA so that we could manage the information and confirm what a child had achieved. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that, for a child to have met the standard, every bullet point or statement had to be demonstrated.

As the STA training for Local Authority leads demonstrated, reading several pieces of work and confirming that a particular standard had been met mostly, consistently, sometimes, occasionally, frequently or whatever takes a long time. Moderation visits were much lengthier than in previous years, especially in three form entry schools, and year 2 and year 6 teachers, who generally do not swim leisurely in oceans of free time, often found assessing every child against each criterion onerous, exhausting and wasteful. Even during the moderation visit, there was insufficient time to follow the exemplification model and ensure that 5 out of 6 pieces ticked enough boxes for a pass. Judgements were required and dialogue was essential. If there is a return to solitary scrutiny by moderators in 2017, they will need sleeping bags and camping equipment for every visit.  

In addition to time pressures, and despite our best efforts as an LA, teachers, who had received the exemplification material late in the year, did not always feel confident or fully prepared for the assessment process. At KS2 they were also preparing children to take tests in grammar, maths and reading which were based on a six-year curriculum of which their children had had eighteen months. At KS1, they were preparing to administer and mark new tests while gathering evidence to make assessments against new criteria in maths, reading and writing. They also had to decide whether to use the grammar test that the government had mistakenly published online a few months earlier and which was originally designed to inform their judgement of children’s writing. Nonetheless, many teachers gave up their time, conscientiously applied the criteria, read the exemplification materials and prepared for moderation with a thoroughness that was admirable but morale-sapping and debilitating. Previously, moderators had travelled in pairs but with the complexity of KS1 assessment and the need to check that the tests had been marked accurately by teachers, this was increased to three. At KS2 we stuck with two moderators per school but, while also moderating the moderators, I often acted as an additional body.

Moderation in all things

When in schools, moderators engaged teachers in a dialogue about the evidence. Receiving provisional assessments in advance meant they were able to select pupils whose work they wanted to see and get a good start to the long process of verifying or challenging judgements. Most teachers did want to talk about the particular qualities of the work being scrutinised and, as in previous years, were keen to point out where a child was using imaginative vocabulary, evocative similes, effectively deployed dialogue or clear expressions of opinion and evidence. They were rightly proud of the occasions in the writing where a particular group of words captured an idea or emotion, i.e. where children discovered the objective correlative! However, moderators had to be party-poopers and bring discussion back to tick sheets and grammatical features. Time was spent hunting down semi-colons and passive constructions at KS2 and at KS1 the exclamation sentence proved elusive and there were debates about horizontal strokes and spaces between letters. Where teachers had undertaken periodic assessment using the tick lists and had deployed them with children during the drafting and proof-reading process, the ticks were forthcoming. Where they hadn’t, aided by well-meaning organisations like NAHT and the unions who had put out guidance emphasising what could and couldn’t be done and had encouraged a retrogressive level-based judgement, things were less straightforward.  A collection of work might well have been a 4B or even a 5 last year but, if the passive voice was lacking or a semi-colon, dash or hyphen could not be found, it was not at the expected standard. The deferred deadline of June 30^th allowed moderators to give schools time to produce extra work which did allow pupils to tick the boxes. This may not be the case next year and in 2016 it added the pressure of an additional visit and extra assurances about independence.

Because teachers were talking to teachers, because there was space to review and because the majority of teachers at KS1 and KS2 had attended briefing sessions and network meetings or knew moderators and advisers they could ask, things went relatively smoothly. Because teachers knew their children extremely well and moderators were keen to help rather than condemn, the dialogue worked. Changes to STA instructions on cursive handwriting did have to be explained and there were many debates about what a ‘wide range of clause structures’ might be and which structures and vocabulary correctly indicated the required levels of formality. As formal writing was also a feature of the ‘greater depth’ standard at KS2, moderators often advised schools to include more formal writing in their plans for next year, suggesting discursive pieces and more stringent approaches to writing  investigations in science for example, where the passive could also be required.  There were also discussions about what constituted a short story (a requirement at KS2) or a narrative (a requirement at KS1), though, in the latter it mattered little as none of the criteria dealt with a text level judgement, unlike the now defunct Foundation Stage descriptors which at least referenced features of a narrative. At KS2 confirming that an atmosphere had been created and dialogue integrated so that character could be conveyed and action advanced did lead to some discussion and schools fared better when they sought to have children produce longer, more sustained narratives and free them from the tyranny of the old writing test or the Big Write model.  This criterion, like the first two KS2 ‘greater depth’ criteria, also seemed more in keeping with old judgements about composition and effect, and less about parading one’s SPAG knowledge.

Conversations with moderated schools unsurprisingly revealed that moderators and teachers shared a frustration with the new assessment system, the political whims that dictated the frameworks and the cack-handed implementation. The arbitrary decision that those working below ‘working below’, i.e. at pre-key stage standards were not to be moderated was concerning for some schools where there were pupils operating at this level. Moderators assisted in this at the school’s request and helped them to distinguish between the three sub-levels that describe pre-key stage 2 performance. How schools who weren’t moderated or who were but did not offer up their ‘pre-key stage’ pupils, got on may be anyone’s guess but with 75% of schools not getting a moderating visit some uncertainty must remain.

An uncertain future

We don’t yet know the details of the 2017 moderation process and whether it will be the same as this and previous years. Government bowed to pressure over the timing of the assessment but said it was only for this this year – thus it may well be that the writing deadline is May 22^nd or thereabouts and KS1 has to be wrapped up by June 13^th ish. KS2 grades/levels/standards or whatever we now call them may have to be submitted to LAs and STA by the end of the very testing month of May with moderators then checking the accuracy of assessments in selected schools. KS1 teachers would just be exhausted shadows of their former selves. Holiday patterns, with Easter vacations and the summer half-term break occurring at different times and for different lengths of time for different schools are likely to cause even greater confusion and complication next year than they did this. The ‘moderation’, as originally envisaged for 2016, may also become a ‘scrutiny’ and not the helpful, collaborative process which moderation defaulted to this year. On the basis of the original instructions to LAs for 2016, scrutineers would march into schools carrying the threat of a maladministration charge with them. They wouldn’t engage in professional dialogue but would sequester themselves in the building, issuing demands for more evidence if required and then present their verdict to the head, LA and STA.  Opportunities to have kids produce last minute pieces of writing so that they did not fall short of the expected standard for want of a colon, dash or embedded clause would be unavailable.

At our post-moderation debrief, moderators shared what they had learned and what they were going to be doing in their own schools next year. At KS1 there was a feeling that there has to be a continuing focus on subject knowledge and on ensuring that practice, e.g. with regard to cursive writing, allows pupils to hit the criteria. Teachers noted that they must make sure that pupils have the chance to use different sorts of sentence, including the mimicking of Swallows and Amazons’ exclamations that begin with a ‘what’ or a ‘how’ and contain a verb (What jolly wonderful lessons will emerge!). They also saw the inevitability of building in periodic internal moderation to identify what needed to be taught directly but were also determined to ensure immersion in a range of texts, regular reading and opportunities to write for pleasure and enjoy language.

Similar thoughts were in the minds of KS2 moderators, who were adamant that they wouldn’t teach to the interim frameworks because tick lists are not helpful in improving writing, whereas an attention to purpose and audience is. Using models of good writing produced by other children and by professional writers was strongly advocated, with attention being drawn to how they use punctuation and particular grammatical structures to achieve a particular effect. They felt it important to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s however and thought the extended tick sheets were a necessity, when undertaking periodic assessment themselves or when engaging pupils in peer and self-assessment and as part of the all-important drafting and proof-reading process. Ensuring that there were opportunities for formal writing was agreed as vital, particularly where pupils aspire to be working at greater depth. This did mean further developing their understanding of what constitutes ‘formality’ and ensuring that the passive voice was encouraged in assignments such as the science report, news report, discursive essay and occasionally in fiction. There was also a desire to increase the knowledge of some of the more abstruse elements of the framework, such as the difference between separating independent clauses with a colon or a semi-colon.  Extended short stories will figure more, it was believed, with teachers concentrating on constructing extended narratives and teaching how to create character, develop action and dialogue and climb and descend the story mountain. All of this being done, of course, with a strong regard for pupil independence.  

Discussion about the 2016 moderation cycle inevitably turned to the tests with reading being the major concern at both KS1 and KS2. How writing, after years of lagging behind performance in reading, suddenly became the stronger discipline, was certainly an area for discussion. The problems with the reading tests at both KS1 and KS2, however, is a topic for another day.

1.    The Cox Report: English for ages 5 to 16. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1989

2.     See michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk . Michael Rosen also produced a poem on the subject called Writing at the Expected Level (20^th June 2016) and has written several pieces on the grammar test and writing assessment.

Summer has arrived, as evidenced by the rain pimpling the driveway outside the dining room where I am now typing.
Just thought I would drop this poem in. I wrote it for our KS1 and KS2 moderators. It reflects the decision made by STA to turn moderation and dialogue with schools into scrutiny and silent appraisal. This decision was later overturned for 2016 but it may be that moderators will be required to act in much less helpful ways in 2017. You need to think Gilbert and Sullivan as  you read it, particularly 'Short Sharp Shock'. I believe the last three words in each line are examples of molossus, a little used metrical foot. Waddya know?

Lament of The Lord High Scrutineers

We scrutinize the scribblings made in key stage one,

In a fractious marking frenzy, til we’re good and done,

Even if the teacher screeches that they’re just chil-drun

And that teaching kiddy-winkies should be much more fun!

(Oh Yes! Teaching kiddy-winkies could be much more fun!)

But the constant concentration on curriculum

And the grinding out of grammar and the big hard sum

Was rigidly required by Mister Cam-er-on,

So we execute the orders, and the tick list’s done!

(Yes! We execute the orders and curriculum!

And we pick on little children and examine ’em)

We standardise the scoring that you have to do,

Monitoring and scrutinising through and through

Then we do it and we do it throughout key stage two

Because that is education now for us and you!

Have just updated Blackpool Primary Deputy heads. Notes below.

‘A Marked Improvement’ April 2016.EEF and Oxford Uni. review of marking and what works.

Essentially, they point to a dearth of evidence about what works but some findings did emerge from the evidence that could aid school leaders and teachers aiming to create an effective, sustainable and time-efficient marking policy. These include that:

·         Careless mistakes should be marked differently to errors resulting from misunderstanding. The latter may be best addressed by providing hints or questions which lead pupils to underlying principles; the former by simply marking the mistake as incorrect, without giving the right answer

·         Awarding grades for every piece  of work may reduce the impact    of marking, particularly            if pupils          become preoccupied with grades at the expense of a consideration of teachers’ formative comments

·         The use         of targets to make marking as specific and actionable as possible is likely to increase pupil progress      

·         Pupils are unlikely to benefit from marking unless some time is set aside to enable pupils to consider and respond to marking

·         Some forms of marking, including acknowledgement marking, are unlikely to enhance pupil progress. A mantra might be that schools should mark less in terms of the number of pieces of work marked, but mark better.

How to Turn Around a Failing School.  Centre for High Performance study.

Please note point 4. This does seem focused on secondaries and it is drawn from evidence of how academies have turned schools around. It isn’t actually recommending these, as is seen in the point to Ofsted.

Learnings for academies The findings suggest academies should make eight changes in the following order:

1. Leadership and objectives - appoint new leaders and narrow objectives

2. Market perception - rebrand school and communicate change

3. Resources - expand service offering and improve admissions

4. Student quality - exclude poor quality students, improve admissions and acquire a local primary school 

5. Structures - centralise activities and improve facilities

6. Process stability - improve student attendance and behaviour

7. Process capability - improve teaching capability

8. Systems - introduce performance development systems

The report also recommended to Ofsted:

Our research with non-educational organisations suggests academies can sustain high-performance if they stabilise leadership, impact society, use alumni and collaborate with other organisations. However, we found no evidence of these sustaining behaviours in the ‘outstanding’ academies we studied. Instead, to meet OfSTED’s assessment criteria and targets, they have developed behaviours that may have a negative long-term impact on society. They have become selective, do not teach their local community, do not teach 'White British' students, exclude poor performing students, focus on Maths and English and focus on getting students to C-level (not B or A). To help correct this, our findings suggest Ofsted should modify its criteria to help develop ‘sustaining’ behaviours in ‘outstanding’ schools and introduce school-specific targets reflecting the type of market it serves.

Teaching assistants report. EEF.

Further work to do but evidence suggests that TAs can improve learning if they are trained and deployed carefully. Given the limited amount of existing evidence, these studies made a substantial contribution to the overall evidence base, changing the overall average impact from zero to one additional months' progresswhen TAs deliver small-group interventions they are effective. The suggest schools consider the following

1.    Have you identified the activities where TAs can support learning, rather than simply managing tasks?

2.    Have you provided support and training for teachers and TAs so that they understand how to work together effectively?

3.    How will you ensure that teachers do not reduce their support or input to the pupils supported by TAs?

4.    Have you considered how you will evaluate the impact of how you deploy your TAs?

They recommend:

Not using TAs as an informal resource for low-ability pupils

Using TA to add value to what teachers do and not replacing teachers with TAs

 Using TAs to develop pupils’ independent learning and self-management skills

Ensuring TAs are sufficiently trained for their role

Use TAs to deliver one-to-one and small group support

Adopting evidence-based interventions to support TAs in their small group work

Ensuring explicit connections are made between structured interventions and everyday teaching.

Having words about KS2
It has been a long time since I blogged last and I thought I ought to start up again - popping in things I am doing rather than waiting for long stretches of time where I can compose something and develop it.
As a starter, here is a piece concocted as an aside to presentations we did on the assessment of writing for the 2016 session (no doubt more to say on that shortly). As a joke, I started to see how many of the national curriculum's year 5 and 6 words I could use in a piece of writing. the idea of concocting a piece of writing which allowed all the descriptors to be covered has some appeal and this was a step towards it, given that spelling the words correctly is a criterion for working at the expected standard. Having done a paragraph or two, I thought I would see if I could use all of them , so I did. I have emboldened the words from the word list.

As you, especially, may appreciate and recognise, I am determined, sincerely and in all conscience, not to be a nuisance, nor to embarrass, harass or criticise any individual. I do not wish to raise the temperature of the debate, to exaggerate the issue or to reawaken an ancient controversy, but I do wish to make a conscious objection to parliament’s belief that English language teaching, in all its variety, should be reduced to matters of correctness and, if spoken, of received pronunciation. Persuaded by a government overly attached to a disastrous education policy, MPs, in one committee or another, missed an opportunity to prevent immediate disaster occurring.

Apparently ignoring the recommendations of the teaching profession, an aggressive education secretary is content to use muscle (political rather than physical) to overpower any opposition, using any available means to bruise their opponents. Mischievous and desperate comments, rooted only in prejudice, have been accompanied by unnecessary interference in the work of the classroom. Excellent teachers, whose existence and very identity are rooted in their desire to help children, are frequently forced to stomach a system they despise and labour in a hostile environment. Although they are keen to accommodate any attempt to benefit the school and its neighbours in the community while encouraging children to achieve, they do not see government interference as relevant. The explanations, to which ministers have put their signature, are not sufficient to convince them otherwise.

The programmes of study do not allow teachers to help pupils communicate effectively but force them to sacrifice a thorough introduction to the rhymes and rhythms of an English language, which has no competition for its flexibility and beauty. The assessment system, now in its tenth or twelfth version, is a hindrance to any attempt to develop curiosity about language or the browsing of a dictionary or thesaurus. It seems to have been designed by an amateur who scribbled it down on a restaurant menu or when taking his or her leisure aboard a marvellously well-fitted yacht moored in some foreign resort. No doubt it was done at the convenience of an overly familiar magnate.

Teachers will definitely soldier on and shoulder the burden imposed upon them. They know the curriculum reeks of the cemetery in which good teaching is interred. According to the DfE, teachers should occupy their time coercing the average child to compose awkward sentences; a process corresponding to no known category of good practice and guaranteed to confuse with lightning speed. These programmes interrupt learning and are merely vehicles carrying cohorts of forty plus to some dark destination. Children are treated like vegetables in the bargain basement of some bizarre greengrocers, where they queue for the privilege of being weighed and bagged. Their silence, I suggest, is a symbol of how ill-equipped they could become as users of language.

Assessing without levels: the leaked report

‘Same as it ever was?’

The long awaited report on primary assessment is due in September but a leaked copy has appeared in the Guardian. It is clearly unfair to comment on the leaked draft but what the hell?

Context
The report was commissioned  after a consultation on new descriptors  for teacher assessment highlighted the confusion and anxiety that had been  generated by the  wanton abandonment of an imperfect but functioning  system. It also came after the initial  publication of test frameworks which  described threshold performance (March 2014 then revised June 2015 DfE on  www.gov.uk). The end of key stage descriptors (October 2014 DfE on www.gov.uk)  offered up a confusing hierarchy which looked remarkably like a set of levels (a child at KS1 and 2 might be working below, towards, at or above age related expectations or attain ‘mastery’ – presumably grand mastery could be a prospective next step when government decide to up the ante!). The descriptors varied in number according to the subject and some were ludicrous – requiring teachers to distinguish degrees of pleasure in reading for instance.  They were very much in keeping with the plethora of other attempts to fill the levelless void with tick lists and sure-fire methods for measuring attainment and progress  in the new curriculum. Forbidden to mention ‘level’, we got  a series of synonyms instead - ladders, stages, steps- with tick lists varying between systems dependent upon what the creators thought were key objectives in each subject .  Experienced and immersed in a levelling system, while operating two different curricula at the same time, schools often experimented with  new assessment in years 1, 3,4 and 5 though  most stuck to levels, to APP and to other systems already in use. They largely followed  NAHT advice and awaited clarification.  Some foresaw and experienced struggles with  ill-informed Ofsted inspectors demanding accurate up to the minute data on the progress of individuals and groups in every class and struggled, in the face of test changes, curriculum revamps and an alien, or non-existent, nomenclature to communicate their understanding of pupils’, classes’ and the school’s  future and current attainment.  There was also anxiety about how they would communicate to parents, who basically understood levels, whether their child was doing well, all right or not so well.  Hopefully apocryphal, tales emerged of  numbers being substituted with flowers or fruit so that a daisy child would have tuliphood as a target and a mediocre apple be encouraged to aspire to peachiness or, in more affluent neighbourhoods, to kumquat status.

I had hoped that  the report would clarify things a bit and address the concerns raised in discussion with the primary schools with which I work.  These concerns included:

• How schools could efficiently and accurately  communicate a child’s current and past  performance on transfer to a new school or to a new class, especially when this did not occur at the end of a key stage where test results might at least give some idea of how best to cater for the newly arrived child.
• How schools could judge whether they, their teachers and their pupils were actually doing well and how they could be assured that their judgements were in line with those a mile or a hundred miles away.
• How hostile Ofsted inspectors could be convinced that school was doing the best by their children, given their  obsession with easily interpretable statistics, their conviction that progress was linear and easily observable, and their fetishistic faith that measuring ‘impact’ was effortlessly accomplishable, as well as being a useful word to throw around  when schools tried to explain what they were doing.
• Whether the transformation of programmes of study into lengthy tick lists was an appropriate substitute for the various level descriptors in operation and what a tick might actually mean about a child's understanding, knowledge and capacities. Whether a tick was a lifelong endorsement that a skill or fact had been acquired or a temporary indication was also a running concern.

The Report
The report is anodyne and its 12 sections, multiple sub-divisions  and 45 pages do not provide many satisfactory answers.  It may be of value as a discussion document and the 5 page section on guidance for assessment policies is transformable into a tick list of questions to ask oneself and thus may have some use. However, the whole, in its draft form, seems to do little more than catch up with the thinking that many primaries have already done. It appends lengthy quotations from the new  Ofsted framework  and the SEND Code of Practice, with which most schools should already be familiar and offers sound but very general advice on how to proceed. The 2009 Expert Group Report on Assessment seems to me to offer more though, again, it  will be familiar to most heads.  This report isn’t without value and will be a basis for discussion with schools, but it is a disappointment for those wanting a bit more clarity as we approach a busy year culminating in a new battery of tests,  and involving uncertainty about how test performance will be reported and anxiety about how to ensure 85% of pupils get to the new 'standard' of secondary readiness. On the basis of pronouncements from government, unemployment also beckons for heads who do not leap that newly raised bar.

The principle offered in the foreword is a sound one: the new curriculum requires “ radical, cultural and pedagogical change, from one which has been too dominated by the requirements of the national assessment framework and testing regime to one where the focus needs to be on high-quality, in-depth teaching supported by in-class formative assessment”. I think this would be supported by most teachers and most heads. Whether  or not it  is more honoured in the breach than the observance, Assessment for Learning is generally agreed to be the key to good learning (notwithstanding some recent TV shows which seem to argue that rote learning en -masse is the most effective means of developing mathematical knowhow).  I don’t think there would be much argument with ensuring that pupils  “know,  apply and understand the matters (sic), skills and processes specified in the ...programmes of study” ( again notwithstanding the fact that the national curriculum only applies to LA maintained schools).  However, reiterating this does not seem to me to address the concerns mentioned earlier which are more about accountability and quality control than about pedagogy directly.  Is AfL as applied in school X working and how do we know? Do we have to wait for the entirety of KS2 (or the five years of secondary schooling for that matter) to find out whether we are doing a good job, as measured by the end of key stage tests and assessments?  I don’t feel that the report actually gets to these questions.  It simply shrugs its shoulders and gives general advice on how schools need to do it for themselves ...but without levels.

The reiteration of Tim Oates’s criticism of levels and the rationale for removing them  is valid enough but seems to me to be an ideological sleight of hand, shying away from the implications of the argument and what should be a more radical attack on the whole assessment system. The accusation that levels ‘required aggregating a wide variety of data into a single number which did not represent pupil performance accurately or meant that levels were being assigned to individual pieces of work regardless of how much of the programmes of study they covered”  is accurate but is this not true at GCSE and A level where single numbers or  letters define performance even if qualified by an informative asterisk? Is it not going to be true of whatever is used to represent KS1 and 2 test performance be it a raw mark, standardised score or complex formula? That the DfE recently announced that the expected  standards will be equivalent to a 2B at KS1 and a 4B at KS2 also suggests we are exactly where we started, or at least that recourse has to be made to a commonly understood terminology. I would also suggest that the assertion made in the report that “secondary schools often found the information received from primary schools unreliable and unhelpful” is an unjust slur on primaries.  Secondaries all too often fail to do anything with the information  they receive and year 7 and 8 pupils continue to complain that they are forced to endure repetition of previous learning  because secondary teachers have not pursued an AfL approach and uncovered prior knowledge. Secondaries  also  too frequently substitute an alternative test (CATs for example)which simply offers up a number rather than a description of what a child knows, understands and can do.

The argument that levels lead to threshold hugging rather than pursuit of mastery is also true I think but seems equally applicable elsewhere – the all important C at GCSE or the AAB ticket to a Russell Group education and a 2.1 or better. The argument that progress had come to mean a shuffle, walk or stride through levels and sub-levels rather than a broadening or deepening of understanding is also a valid criticism but does the 'no-one left behind' approach of the new curriculum and “no longer grouping pupils according to levels” really mean a more personalised, mixed ability approach in this undifferentiated brave new world ? Maybe.  And maybe levels disappearing will mean pupils gain an “improved mind set about their own ability” but is this feasible with the continued existence of end of key stage tests, grammar schools, social and economic selection and pressure to drive 85% of pupils to the expected standard in years 2 and 6? I feel there is a bit of blind optimism here.

 When addressing the curriculum, the report emphasises the “specific knowledge pupils should acquire by the end of each key stage” suggesting that, without levels, schools will “develop approaches to in-school assessment which are better tied to curriculum content”. This seems to me to be dodging questions about how ‘mastery’ of  skills, processes and application is demonstrated. It emphasises the 'stuff ' or ‘matters’ that are easiest to assess and easiest to forget once the test is done.  Admittedly, ‘mastery’ is  helpfully addressed in a short section which explores its origins in Bloom’s work,  but the report's endorsement of an approach where knowledge(sic)  is broken into discrete units, presented  in a logical order and formatively assessed following “high-quality instruction” seems more applicable to content than process and skills and there is no real life example on offer. Indeed the examples of good practice cited throughout  the report seem to be vague  assertions, lacking specificity of subject, topic or outcome. A sense of hopeful generality and imprecision dominates.

A section on the purpose and principles of assessment is helpful, if not news to anyone likely to read the report, and there is a welcome emphasis throughout on dealing with children with SEN. Inclusion is writ large in the report and justifiably so. There is also a section, of great interest to heads I suspect, on data collection and reporting. This argues that there is no need for lots of recording of formative assessment  and it  is strong on defending teachers against excessive and pointless work.  I doubt that many teachers will argue against the judgement that “real learning is a slow process and can- at best- be observed only through indirect and approximate, measures. For most learners, even the best assessments are not accurate enough to reliably detect real changes in individuals’ deep learning over a period of less than a year”. In fact many have made this sort of argument over the years only to be ignored by government and by Ofsted inspectors claiming that such change is discernible in a twenty minute observation and perfectly captured by a matrix, graph or column of figures.  Will heads be able to quote this statement when challenged by an aggressive inspector demanding to know how well year 4 pupils are doing and why the school cannot pinpoint the precise degree of progress made? Will this be a valid reason for explaining KS2 results which drop below the 85% pass mark for schools?

Ofsted were allies in the report's construction, or at least were involved with the Commission – hence the repeated references to its new handbook. The section on accountability and inspection deals directly with the Ofsted view  (though not necessarily its actual practice of course). Citing the handbook at length the section is full of references to progress and meeting, or preferably exceeding, challenging targets set on the basis of prior attainment (more neutrally called ‘starting points’ and possibly alluding to new baselines as well as KS1 scores). A small section on ‘myths’ fails to answer any concerns about  how Ofsted continues to endorse the sorts of things this reports seems at times to argue against. Pleasingly, there is a strong recommendation for the “inspectorate and school leaders to develop a rigorous  and shared understanding of all aspects of summative and formative educational assessment” and a  euphemistic recommendation that there is some training for inspectors who may need support in developing their understanding of assessment without levels.

There are other recommendations too. Dissemination of the report and extensive and intensive CPD are obviously part of that. A national question bank is  also mooted with questions and model answers being available to schools. Though quality control is also recommended and teachers are invited to make deposits in the bank, the idea seems to me to be rather dangerous and analogous to those stockpiles of comments that schools sometimes used on reports and which failed to address the idiosyncrasies of individuals and groups. The recommended increase in training in assessment in ITT and throughout a teaching career seems a more productive avenue to me, as does the use of SLEs in assessment or  the development of chartered assessors.

Success criteria  are offered for measuring how assessment without levels has fared. I am not entirely convinced of their use as descriptors however.  Much is open to interpretation (one of the criticisms made of levels and perhaps inevitable when language is the medium used) and there is  little that is easily measurable or reportable:  pupils taking responsibility for their own learning, teacher confidence, greater responsiveness in children, stronger links between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, meaningful conversations with parents and greater professional expertise. An aversion to sarcasm prevents me saying that I am  surprised they couldn't come up with a standardised score to measure each discrete step on the way.

The final published report may make my concerns look like the grumpy, ramblings of an ancient pedagogue.  I hope so. I also hope that any new descriptors for teachers to use at the end of key stages 1 and 2 and the reporting system for the KS2 tests help lead to a system which truly endorses assessment for learning and personalised learning. Everything will then be for the best  in this, the best of all possible assessment worlds.

Top Ten Class Readers for years 5 and 6

A teacher in one of my schools recently asked for advice on good books to use as class readers with years 5 and 6. Pleased both to be asked and that class readers are continuing to make a comeback with the new curriculum’s emphasis on reading for pleasure, I thought I would have a go. Serendipitously, the TES published a ‘bucket list’ of the 100 books primary pupils should read by age 11 a few weeks ago.  Although this is more suggestive of a ‘cultural literacy’ obsession with which I am not entirely comfortable and is, in reality, a popularity contest in which teachers voted for their favourites, it is nonetheless an interesting list going well beyond years 5 and 6. The top ten were:

1.    Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

2.    Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

3.    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

4.    Matilda by Roald Dahl

5.    The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

6.    The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis

7.    The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

8.    We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen

9.    Dogger by Shirley Hughes

10. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

The 100 is a catholic mixture where elderly classics like Black Beauty, Treasure Island, The Railway Children and the Wind in the Willows sit alongside younger classics by authors like Malorie Blackman, Jacqueline Wilson and Anthony Browne. By using the poster version from the middle pages of the TES, or pasting a copy of the list in reading logs, schools might  prompt a little more wide reading with a ‘read’em all’ competition enticing keen readers, informing present buying parents and attracting the lovers of lists and collectibles. The list might also attract pupils to books that do feature but have faded from the classrooms that I go into. These include once ubiquitous works by Gene Kemp, George Layton, Alan Garner and the surprisingly absent  Betsy Byars (Midnight Fox, TV Kid, The Eighteenth Emergency) and Gwen Grant (Private Keep Out).

The full list of 100 books is available at: https://www.tes.co.uk along with a list for secondary pupils which has more of a canonical flavour than does the primary version.

Apparently the Twittersphere was alive with comment on the lists and led to librarian and author Dawn Finch compiling one of her own. Her lengthy collation (125 books) is helpfully subdivided into picture books, books where chapters appear, books with longer chapters or stronger themes and then transition texts, many of which feature as  readers in secondary schools.  She also adds poetry suggestions. Her list is available at https://deefinch.wordpress.com.

My own list overlaps with hers and with the TES compilation and focuses on texts that I think would make great class reads across upper key stage two. There are caveats around some of my choices of course. Inevitably the most exciting and interesting fiction can offend particular sensibilities and offer  various challenges, not all intellectual.  Obviously, teachers  need to read in advance to check suitability for their own classes and circumstances, anticipating objections from parents who are more conservative about what 10 and 11 year olds should be reading or from KS3 teachers who are fearful that their favourite class novel has migrated into the primary sector (as Louis Sachar’s Holes did and Dawn Finch suggests should be the case with Boy in the Striped Pyjamas). I welcome dispute and disagreement, hoping it prompts children themselves to engage in discursive or argument writing and speaking round issues of censorship and choice. Do they think they are too young to read books containing, for example, mild swearing, violence or what could be controversial subject matter? Debate can enhance their practice as readers, allowing them to consider issues such as whether a character is independent of an author or necessarily a role model in all they say or do. As more and more teen fiction crosses over into adult reading and into primary school reading (Harry Potter and Hunger Games for example) discussion and debate is likely to recur.

My list below is not exhaustive and reflects my own tastes and interests but I think the books will do what a good class read should do: engage the class; stimulate interest from both boys and girls and from both avid and reluctant readers; offer opportunities to examine how writers use language for effect, structure a story and say something about the world; and generate a variety of written and oral work. These books also offer possibilities for activity in other subject areas and, through good questioning and close reading will develop essential reading and writing skills as well as giving opportunity for all sorts of talk. My list seems a bit male heavy but it is by no means exclusive and I’d be happy for any teacher or child to take issue with any of the choices and substitute their own.

I have tried to nominate individual works but, given that some of the best books were designed to be part of a series and avid readers crave involvement in characters beyond a single encounter, I have included several series books. The list is organised by author rather than just by text.

In no particular order:

1. Antony Horowitz: Pretty much anything he has written. Stormbreaker would be first choice but any of the Alex Ryder stories has mileage. The series charts the adventures of the reluctant teenage spy and references James Bond, ( though not as much as the also excellent Charlie Higson Young Bond books do). Opportunities for a variety of work abound including non-fiction writing about the inventive gadgets Alex uses (a book exists detailing some of these and can be used as a model).  Spyology from   is also a useful non-fiction text to support topic work cntred upoin the book. A film version and graphic novel are also available for Stormbreaker. Further reading of Horowitz could include the Power of Five series and, though they may not get the allusions to classic cinema, the Diamond Brothers stories offer humour and an entry into detective fiction. Horowitz Horror and HH2 also have much to offer.
2. Robert Muchamore. The Recruit is also a spy novel and the first in a lengthy series. It is grittier than Alex Ryder and, as the central characters grow into teenhood, they also encounter prejudice, bad language and sexual desire. The Recruit is the most accessible for the under 12s, is particularly appealing to boys without excluding girls and makes an interesting contrast to the Alex Ryder books. The spy/espionage topic works just as well with this as a central text and there is a Cherub website to support readers who are engrossed in the novels and want to go further.
3. Neil Gaiman. The Graveyard Book. I think Coraline would also feature on my list, as it does on Dawn Finch’s, but it is the story of Nobody Owen (Bod) that really makes me long to be sat in a classroom on an darkening Autumn afternoon reading aloud to a class. Brilliantly written, and thus useable as a model for ghost, horror or adventure writing, the story details Bod’s childhood, living amongst the deceased inhabitants of a graveyard.
4. Joe Delaney. The Spook’s Apprentice. Other books in the Spook’s  series are worth reading but I would start with the first of them. This is appealing, partly as an alternative to Harry Potter and partly because it uses real locations around Lancashire, the home of the Pendle witches and my own place of residence. Members of the local CofE diocese have condemned it unread as it deals with the supernatural but I doubt it will drive anyone to devil worship. Good links to a history topic and lots of opportunities for exploring historical attitudes to witches and the supernatural. An appalling film version could supplanted by pupils coming up with their own scripts.
5. Vivian Allcock.  The Monster Garden. A favourite of mine for many years and offering possibilities for looking at science writing and explanation texts. The story centres on girl, appropriately called Frances L Stein, who is neglected by geneticist father and aspiring scientist brother but whose own experiments accidentally lead to the creation of Monnie, a creature who is brought to life in a lightning storm and proceeds to grow disturbingly quickly. It is a gentle read but absorbing and imaginative.
6. Morris Gleitzman. Bumface. Selected partly because of its brilliant opening, which cannot fail to hook a ten year old reader, but it is also on the list because it is touching and amusing, as is the case with much of Gleitzman’s work. It deals with arranged marriages, culture clashes, friendship and children’s perceptions of the adult world but in a way that is gentle and amusing.
7. Theresa Breslin. Whispers in the Graveyard. Another long time favourite because it is so well written and engrossing. More spooky stuff and graveyards as the hurt and neglected Solomon finds his refuge in the local cemetery is disturbed by developers who unleash dark forces locked beneath the earth. It is sure to enthral a class and offers a model for ghost story writing as well as for discussion about tales of myth and legend.
8. Phillip Pulmann. Clockwork. Some keen readers will have started on Pullmann’s Dark Materials trilogy and may have seen the film of Northern Lights but I’d be using the much shorter Clockwork  with year 5 and 6s as an introduction to his work. It is a mysterious tale which does fascinating things with language and with narrative.  Reminiscent of spiky east European animation, this tale of automata, Faustian pacts, sacrifice and heroism is imaginative and has all sorts of links to fables and morality tales. Lots of possible links to science fiction tropes too.
9. Michelle Paver.  Wolf Brother.  First book in the trilogy of Chronicles of Darkness and it will make pupils want to read the other two. It is set in an ancient, well imagined world of forest, ice, wolves and tribal loyalties and offers opportunities to explore stone age life and to chart the journeys of the hero, heroine and the wolf who aids them.
10. Lemony Snicket. A Series of Unfortunate Events. A meta-fictional treat with fascinating characters and a great story which extends to 13 self-contained books. It is rare to find a children’s book which announces the absence of a happy ending at the start and advises readers to go elsewhere but this one does it and continues to play with narrative and with language in ways which avid readers will enjoy while others are engrossed in the twists and turns of the plot. An OK film version has been made and there are some spin off books about the Baudelaire siblings who are at the centre of the narrative.

I thought long and hard about which ten books to choose and already rue the absence of Phillip Reeve, Carl Hiaasen and Patrick Ness let alone Malorie Blackmann, Louis Sachar, Ann Fine and Jacqueline Wilson but you can only get a limited number of class reads into a two year period and, if half of the above were used, I think there would be lots of reading for pleasure taking place inside and outside the classroom. My list of what kids would enjoy reading on their own would be a great deal longer!

 if anyone does read this list they should feel free to roll their eyes at my ignorance and idiosyncratic choices. No doubt they will have a better list of their own.