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Framework for teaching mathematics

Long-term assessments

Towards the end of the school year you will need to assess and review pupils' progress and attainment against school and national targets, drawing on your class record of key objectives and supplementary notes.

Long-term assessments are important in each year group, not just at the end of Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Their purposes are to:

• assess pupils' work against the key objectives for the year;
• at the end of a key stage, assess pupils' work against national standards;
• give you supplementary information about individual children's attainment and progress so that you can report to parents and the child's next teacher;
• help the school to set targets for the National Curriculum tests in future years;
• allow the headteacher to brief the governing body, the staff and others on overall progress and attainment in the school as a whole, including progress towards school, LEA and national targets.

The main ways in which these long-term assessments are made are through end-of-year tests for children from Year 2 onwards, and teacher assessments.

• The compulsory National Curriculum mathematics tests for pupils in Years 2 and 6 can be supplemented by the optional tests for Years 3, 4 and 5 provided by QCA. The age-standardised scores which result from these tests will help you to monitor whether pupils individually and collectively are attaining at, below or above the 'national average' score of 100, and how their attainment compares with their attainment in the previous year. Results expressed as National Curriculum levels will help you to judge overall standards and progress towards school, LEA and national targets.
  Each year QCA publishes for each Key Stage a Standards Report analysing pupils' performance on the National Curriculum test questions. These reports can help you to identify particular weaknesses which you may need to tackle in your next phase of teaching.
• You will also need to make a teacher assessment to sum up your judgement of children's attainment. For Year 2 and Year 6 your end-of-year assessment will need to be made against the National Curriculum level descriptions. The cumulative picture which you carry in your head of the progress of each child in your class can be extended and secured by looking through samples of children's work. You will then need to update and complete your class record of key objectives, and any supplementary notes you have made on individual pupils.

Before you make your end-of-key-stage teacher assessment, it is helpful if all staff across a key stage can examine together a sample of pupils' work from each class. This moderation exercise helps to make sure that judgements against the National Curriculum level descriptions are consistent through the school. Exemplifications of children's work published by QCA are particularly helpful at this time.