Draft

Response to DfE Consultation:

Performance Indicators for use in Key Stage 1 and 2 Statutory Teacher
Assessment for 2015 / 2016

Prof George A. Constantinides
10 November 2014


In this briefing, I outline my draft response to the above DfE consultation. Others should
feel free to use my arguments and/or my text and share theirs with me.


1. Do the names of the draft performance descriptors allow teachers and parents to
understand the meaning of, and differentiate between, each performance descriptor?

No.

The terminology working towards the national standard versus working below the
national standard is confusing. If a pupil is still working towards a standard then it
would seem natural to assume that he/she has not yet met the standard and so is
working below the standard.

In practice, the system of multiple performance descriptors for teacher assessment
introduces a levelling. However, unlike the system of levels which it replaces, the new
system places a cap on reported attainment at the level corresponding to mastery of the
national curriculum at a given pupils key stage.


2. Are the performance descriptors spaced effectively across the range of pupils
performance to support accurate and consistent judgements?


No.

a. For teacher assessments, there are a set of minimum standards that must be met in
order to be judged to be working below national standard (e.g p.8 of the consultation
document). However, this appears to make no sense because this is the lowest
assessment level. If pupils have not met these criteria, will they still be awarded this
judgement unless assessed against P-scales?

b. Those subjects judged by test only have one performance descriptor and therefore
clearly do not have performance descriptors spaced effectively across the range of
pupils performance. This is a serious flaw.

c. Even those subjects judged by teacher assessment do not extend into the range of
material high attaining pupils can be expected to master while in a given key stage.
While we note that any pupils considered to have attained the Mastery standard are
expected to explore the curriculum in greater depth and build on the breadth of their
knowledge and skills within that key stage. [Para 13], the proposed performance
descriptors provide no way of evidencing greater depth and breadth than the mastery
standard. This is a very serious omission.

3. In your opinion, are the performance descriptors clear and easy to understand?

No.

A concrete example is begin to find 1/3 and 1/4 of a small set of objects. What does
begin to find mean, and how is it different to find? How large is a small set of
objects?

Another concrete example is reason about and solve more complex problems involving
shapes and their properties. More complex than what? Which properties? Arguably, this
criterion could always or never be met depending on interpretation.

There are many other such examples in the document. In our view, the DfE should
carefully evaluate these criteria in order to ensure that the overwhelming majority of
teachers, whether specialists in the subject under assessment or not, would come to the
same conclusion over whether a particular piece of work is demonstrable evidence of
having met a particular criterion.



4. In your opinion, does the content of the performance descriptors adequately reflect the
national curriculum programmes of study?

Given that assessment is on a best fit basis, we see no reason for a separate set of
performance descriptors beyond the information already in the National Curriculum
programmes of study. In particular, we note that Paragraph 3 states

Levels were intended to provide a universal framework to ensure that schools were
measuring attainment and progress consistently. But, over time, it became clear
that the level descriptors, which were not closely related to curriculum content,
were ambiguous and open to different interpretations

We believe that the proposed system of performance descriptors is no less or more
susceptible to drift from programmes of study or to ambiguity than level descriptors.

Given the clarity of the statements in the programmes of study, we propose that
assessment should be a best fit against these statements, with the underlying question
which year group expectation in the programme of study can this pupil be best
described as operating at? Where the DfE believes that there is insufficient detail in the
programmes of study to make such an assessment (e.g. in subjects without year-by-year
curriculum content) we believe that such detail should be added directly to the
programmes of study if statutory and comparable assessment is expected.


5. Should any element of the performance descriptors be weighted (i.e. should any element
be considered more important or less important than others?)

No.

Because the assessment is to be by best fit, it is not clear how weighting of criteria
could work in this context.

6. If you have any further comments regarding the performance descriptors, please provide
details. For example, is there further supporting information that would be helpful in
understanding and using the performance descriptors?


a. We note with some alarm that the highest level of attainment in KS2 measurable
under the proposed assessments is significantly below the highest level of attainment
measurable in SATs up to 2015. In particular, children assessed to be working at
national standard in 2016 may show a level of mastery of subject content significantly
below that expected to achieve a Level 6 in SATs in 2015. We view this as a serious
concern; we are worried that without the oversight of statutory assessment, which
covers neither broadening and deepening nor extending beyond the mastery of key
stage content, some schools may drift towards a dumbing down of the curriculum,
with using the new descriptors as a ceiling for content rather than a baseline for
learning. Secondary schools will be left to pick up the learning previously covered in
primary schools, putting further pressure on secondary schools, and the rate of GCSEs
passed at the highest grades may directly suffer as a result.

b. Paragraph 3 of the consultation states that the assessment and test data will enable
parents to compare attainment and progress in different schools.

We do not have confidence that the proposed assessment and test data will enable
parents to compare progress in different schools to any reliable degree. In Maths and
Reading, the maximum level of attainment that can be reported at KS1 is Mastery
whereas at KS2 it is Working at the National Standard. Consider two pupils A and B.
Pupil A was assessed at KS1 as Working Towards the National Standard, Pupil B was
assessed at KS1 as Working at Mastery Standard. The maximum progress that can be
shown between key stages for Pupil B is necessarily less than for Pupil A, and occurs
when both are assessed at KS2 as Working at the National Standard. There needs to be
a much finer granularity of attainment reported at KS2, and it needs to extend higher
than Mastery of the content outlined.

c. We note that there is a specific paragraph dealing with lower attaining pupils, and that
it may be possible to assess pupils who move through material at a naturally slow rate
(using P-scales). We note an imbalance of approach, with no corresponding way to
assess high attaining pupils who may be able to move through material at a naturally
high rate.