Science Framework

Assessment and target setting

Many pupils now leave Year 6 with personal targets, records and a history of intervention. This body of information can help secondary teachers to make a quick start on work that is well matched to pupils' capabilities. The clean-sheet approach is too slow, and allows pupils to coast or to fall back when they need to be challenged. As a minimum, teachers of Year 7 classes should know about pupils' science attainment from Year 6 and, on the basis of their average points score from Key Stage 2, their projected likely level of attainment in Year 9. Reviewing other performance data, teacher assessments and early work in Year 7 will alert you to unexpected changes in performance which need to be resolved and enable you to adjust your teaching expectations accordingly.

Priorities for each new cohort can be derived from Key Stage 2 levels and raw scores and the qualitative information provided by work sampling and other monitoring in the early part of Year 7. This helps the department to translate wider ambitions such as 'improve knowledge and understanding of life processes and living things (Sc2)' first into numerical targets, such as 'increase by 10% the proportion of pupils achieving the Year 7 key objectives for cells by the end of Year 7', then into specific curricular targets, such as 'all pupils will recognise that all cells have a nucleus, cell membrane and cytoplasm'.

Assessment, recording and reporting are important elements of teaching but they have to be manageable if the information they yield is to be useful. The best assessment has an immediate impact on both teaching and learning. First, it alerts you to the needs of pupils who are either out of step or exceeding expectations. Second, it helps you to maintain the pace of learning for all pupils by informing teaching plans in a continuous cycle of planning, teaching and assessment. Third, the immediate feedback that you give to pupils, and the self-assessments that you encourage them to make, are crucial in helping them to identify how to improve their work.

It is useful to consider assessment at three connected levels: short-term, medium-term and long-term.