Going out for the Summer

This may be the last post until mid-August.  On the other hand I may get bored and do loads of blogging over the Summer holidays.  Either way, we break up on Friday, and I've really enjoyed my first year of blogging - thanks for reading, commenting and being there :)

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Assessment Through The Looking Glass

The old 5-14 assessments used to give robust, consistent answers to specific questions. The questions were of the form "what percentage of P7 students have managed to score at least 15 marks in one of a specific set of nationally generated assessment instruments". We thought that the questions were of the form "what percentage of P7 students have passed level D mathematics", but of course that isn't what we were measuring. We were measuring performance in tests. The mistaking of test performance for evidence of "passing a level" was bad, but we were right in thinking that we compared like with like as we looked at performance data from across Scotland.

Now we have abandoned national tests, and have moved towards measuring "passing a level" based on a combination of a rich bundle of assessments and teacher professional judgement. But what does it actually mean to have passed level 3 in numeracy? CfE documentation talks about assessing breadth…
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The Scottish Curriculum: A Beginner's Guide

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