Episode 218: Meaningful school assessment

Andy Psarianos
Welcome back everyone to another exciting episode of the school of school podcast. We've got our regular friends here, Robin Potter and Adam Gifford say hi guys.

Adam Gifford
How you doing, Andy?

Robin Potter
Don't set us up like this, Cindy.

Andy Psarianos
how many times have I, anyway, okay, whatever. I'm not going to go there. Okay. We've got a really great guest today. Sarah Matthews from Stanton St. Quentin and Wilshire. sent Sarah runs a school. She's a head teacher there and, say hi, Sarah. Tell us, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sarah Matthews
Hi, so I'm Sarah Matthews. I have the privilege of teaching and leading the school in Stansted Quinton, which is a very small village school. We have military barracks in the village as well, so that comes with lots of diversity and children moving in and out.

Andy Psarianos
So Sarah, we want to talk today about assessment. We want to talk about what you think about it and what you're doing at your school. maybe we can get into SATs as well. So why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about what you're doing with assessment at your school.

Sarah Matthews
So in terms of assessment, we have to do the statutory assessments set by the government. So that is the baseline at the beginning of the year, the multiplication times table check in year four, and then the end of key stage two. So those are our definite assessments that we do. And then we do some on top of those. We have really in the last few years looked at what assessments we were doing and why we were doing them, because I think

you can spend too much time assessing and not enough teaching. And it was really important for us to maximise the time that we were spending teaching. Obviously, we needed to make sure the assessment was meaningful and informed what we were doing and that we did a lot with it. I know that there's lots of good assessments out there. You do it and you get some value, you get a standardised score or you get an age. But what happens next with that information?

So very much part of our assessment, and especially in Key Stage 2, is if we do any form of assessment, it's then spending time with that pupil, possibly one-to-one, and looking at it so that next time they aren't making those same mistakes, or looking through, and Maths — No Problem! is really good at this, where you can see all their areas, particularly the baseline assessments that you do at the beginning of the year, if you then look at it and go, so none of them got that percentage question.

right was that the teaching of percent? actually that was the week it was sports day they didn't really do percentages or we're back in the books we really do need to do that next year so can you know assessment has its place and could be really really important.

Andy Psarianos
Yeah. Well, you know, if you're trying to lose weight, it's easier if you have a scale, right? But the scale doesn't help you lose weight. It just tells you whether or what you're doing is working, right? You still got to do the work. You still got to do the exercise and, you know, not eat sort of, you know, I don't know.

Fairy cakes for breakfast or whatever right like there's Scott is you know, it's not it's not about the scale, right? It's about what you do. It's just a tool to inform you and and you got to use it wisely.

So what are what are some of the things will you that you had a look at your assessment? What were some of the things where you went? Yeah, why are we doing that again?

Sarah Matthews
We were doing quite a lot of reading ages, spelling ages. Quite often secondary schools would want them for us. And whilst the tests were, we'd gone to doing them online so that they were then able to see how the child was spelling and then give them a more difficult one. But when you get children with these big spelling ages, what does that mean, a random set of words? So we were looking at this at cost.

what were we doing with those? So we pared back on some of those and we've got our own, for example, with spelling, the words that we want them to use. There is a government list as well that they get tested on.

So we've tailored that. It might be on some occasions that if we're going for a child has got a SEND need and we want evidence, we might go for a more standardized test because that could be useful for that. But we did rein back on those.

We do the three Maths — No Problem! assessments, which work really well because you have the baseline mid-year and end of year and then we sandwich between those English assessments. So we're not also assessing children. We used to have this assessment week and then they'd have a maths one, they'd have an English one and we've spread it out now. So it's not that you're doing more than one subject at the same time. And then that does give you time and priority. We've done the maths assessments, right?

Now let's look at those assessments, let's act on those. And we're not trying to do that as well as a reading one, et cetera, if that makes sense.

Andy Psarianos
Yeah. And act on those is I think the important statement that you made there because you know, what, what, what's the point of assessing if you're not acting on them, right? And, you know, there's only really two reasons to assess, you know, one is to, is to help children learn. Right. And the other one is, is to measure,

Sarah Matthews
Progress.

Andy Psarianos
Yeah, it's kind of like his, the history, you know, it's historic. It's, it's looking back. It's like, that thing that we did, did it work? You know, so it's measuring your own progress, I suppose, as in your teaching practice, but more important, the more important one obviously is to, use it to be, to inform yourself as to what you should do next. Right. And, um, yeah, yeah.

Sarah Matthews
Absolutely. The children in my class, they will know their Maths — No Problem! results, for example, what they got on that paper and they will try, well, they will beat them the next time and they will look at what they did from that. They're very much involved in it quite often, you know, they want you to mark the paper next to them, they want to see how they did. So from them, they're celebrating that success, which is, which they, you know, that...

that's really nice when they've done that. They were doing their practice arithmetic papers just before SATs they had one. I don't do many. I know I've been in schools where, you know, constantly, constantly doing practice papers before tests. We do a few because I think it's important. You need to know test techniques. You need to know how things are laid out. But for example, this year, my older children, my year six is

I entered them into, I don't know if you've heard of the UK Maths Trust, they do competitions. So they were asking schools to trial this new kangaroo competition. So I've got a few of my children, they did it, they enjoyed it.

And then there was another one about two days before SATS and I was going, are you sure? they're going, yes, we need to, yeah, we want to do this competition. I said, you sure you don't want to do any? No. So I was like, okay, fine, let's do it. Yeah, let's keep the enthusiasm in maths going.

And they were doing their arithmetic papers and majority of all of them were getting full marks or near full marks before that and they could see that progress across the year so that was that was good.

Andy Psarianos (07:17.16)
Fantastic. Yeah. And there's something really important in what you said there because, you know, assessments don't have to be high anxiety. They don't have to be high pressure, right?

Because for so many, in so many situations, that's exactly what it is. And that's the argument that people use for not doing assessments is that it's just too much anxiety for the children. Right.

Why do you think that, why do you think that the children get so interested in sitting next to the teacher and marking their own assessment and they don't, you know, run away from it.

Sarah Matthews
I think it's the environment that we have created with them and that they feel safe that even if they've got something wrong, they see that as this is an opportunity. So whilst they might be disappointed, they get something wrong.

They want to know, they've got that desire and that drive to know what I didn't do this time that I need to do next time. It's that journey of learning. So, you know, I've got quite a lot of children. They won't be interested in the ones they've got right. It's like, where did I go wrong? Okay, let's work back through the steps. that, yeah.

Okay, that was just a simple error. No, I didn't understand that question. I don't understand that topic. I need some more additional support on that. So I think it's the way that we do it with the children and the way that, you say, I think that was really important that you said about there's a lot of anxiety around tests. I've not really experienced that. I had governors come in to watch the assessments this year and they said the children are just, almost seem happy to be doing these tests.

And that's the way that, you know, that we've kind of set up the ethos within the school, that it's not high stakes, we don't want it to be stressful for them, we want it to be an opportunity for them to show off what they can do.

Adam Gifford
But I think, think that, sorry, I just going to say that the other thing that I find is that sometimes, you know, schools will say we just want a calm environment and all those sorts of things, which is admirable.

But actually, I think that at the heart of it, from what you've described, your children trust that the assessment is going to help them. And I just wonder, like, sometimes the assessment we can say, no, this is OK and lots of stuff. But if you don't see the end result, right?

So if Andy says to me, right, I'm just going to give you this and I want you to do this test for me now. And he doesn't say anything. Well, I'm to be a bit nervous. What's he doing with this? there something on the line here?

Do you know what I mean? But I think that if, you know, like, and I think this rings true for all of us. If we know that.

So, but I think the thing is, is that if the children not just know, but they really believe that it's being used to help them learn.

then why would they see it as anything other than, you know, this is the part of learning. This is just something that we trust, you know, that's gonna feed back to us. Because I think sometimes it's not that. It's like, practise, practise, practise. You know what mean? I just think there has to be a belief that they trust you.

Andy Psarianos
Yeah, and it's the words that you use, Sarah. It's safe, you know?

It's safe, right? They know it's safe, right? They feel welcome in your school. We talked about that in a previous podcast, you know, that that's you've created that environment for them.

Right? So then now you can push those like, okay, well, we don't need to be anxious here because we know nothing bad's going to happen. We're all here for you to learn. So let's talk about learning.

Let's talk about how this contributes to your learning. And they see that they know that they feel confident. They trust you. They trust you're not going to use it against them somehow.

They're not going to get in trouble, you know, whatever it is. And then that that's the doors open for learning, right? For cooperation for, you know, and that's just fantastic.

Robin Potter
And the other thing I'm hearing is not just from the student side, but from the teacher's side at your school. There's this, I'm usually hearing, like you said, there's often stress, Andy, that goes with, you know, prepping for assessment, but it's also coming from the teachers.

And there's none of that from what you've described, Sarah, at your school, like that, you know, can we prepare them in time, are they ready for this?

It's none of that. It sounds more like genuine enthusiasm and excitement from everyone in the school. And I don't think that's common.

Sarah Matthews
I think it's also as well that they're very supportive of each other in terms of these assessments as well. And quite often, you know, we could in smaller groups be going through questions and what's really nice and they were doing this today within the lesson, if somebody's, I can't quite get that, they lean over and go,

You could do that there or they show them that. especially in a mixed-age classes, there's a lot of supporting each other and there's a lot of independence because quite often I can be with one year group or one group of children and they then have to, you know, become teachers or support other children, which is really nice. That helps them in that kind of cycle in terms.

You know, we do have some people that might get a little bit nervous, but I talk about that as good nerves and talk about that if it's something you, it's because you care about it. And quite often, if anybody puts any pressure on them, it's them putting it on themselves because they, you know, they want to do well and they also want to please me and please other people. So, you know, that's that kind of, you know, I've worked hard, but all the time it's very much like you've put the work in and it's very important, you know, the...

Easter holidays before the SATs and the holidays I don't give them any... They very hardly have any home learning. That will be a separate subject because I believe they should do other things after school and not on the computers and doing extra stuff. We work really hard at school. You go home, you do what you want to do at home, you go to swimming lessons, etc.

So there's no lots of papers and stuff before. So it's very much about not overwhelming them but making sure that they feel really confident and prepared and giving them that confidence and transferring that over to them and it works really well.

Andy Psarianos
So Sarah, what's your view on stats? Stats? SATs!

Sarah Matthews
Well, I think we proved during Covid that we don't need them. I think the hardest thing for my children based on what we're saying is I collect them up and I put them in an envelope and they say, what, you're not going to mark them with us now?

We're not going to, no, no, you're not going to find out until July the results. So that is very different to when we've done something in class and we can immediately or within the next few days be looking at how they've done.

So that's a big change for them. Somebody's going to scan their work and an external marker is going to read them. I don't think that I don't need them in terms of maths. As soon as we didn't have to do them at the end of Key Stage 1, we said we're not doing them. We've got Maths — No Problem! assessments. We use NFER reading papers.

We've got other things that tell us I don't need that SATS paper to tell me that that child is working at that level. I know that and I can confirm that or back that up with a more formal assessment like the one in maths for Maths — No Problem! And I don't think that it's necessarily used then in secondary schools. They reassess them again. So what is the purpose of them? They also really very much

In some ways, they cut short this term. So I was very fortunate and my year sixes finished the whole year six Maths — No Problem!, didn't miss a lesson, don't think they missed a page, because they're very particular about that, before SATs, because did five lessons and our lessons are an hour and a half a day.

So there's a big proportion of our curriculum in maths. And it is nice now because we will do other things. We'll do...calculator projects, money projects, we will carry on maths, there's no way they won't carry on their maths and they know that and they know how important it is to keep those skills sharp, they'll do their daily arithmetic.

But it does mean that it's almost for them, they see that as the end point and if they didn't have that, you know, that does, you know, when we didn't have them for SATs, we sort of carried on, it felt like there was more that we could spend longer on it, if you see what I mean.

Adam Gifford
Because that's what I was going to ask you about, right? I was going to ask, do consciously manage the perception of the mathematics that's held in a statutory assessment. And what I'm really getting at is the year four multiplication test that they have to sit down, they have to do this. And it's almost as if this is a branch or a body of maths that sits alone and off it goes. And likewise, your year six SATs.

And I just wonder whether, if just left to as it is, there's almost a disconnect as if this is some form of other type of mathematics that, you know, because we want our children to respond to the world mathematically, right? You talk about forest schools, there's so many opportunities to do that, and to actually use maths as it should be used. And I just wonder if it's something that you have to consciously manage to kind of go, we've not done all that maths just for this.

And it's almost a mystical this because like you're saying, not only do you get the chance to do it, you don't even get a chance to see how you've done with your teacher. That's apparently a really important part of the assessment. No, it just gets put in an envelope. We're not allowed to see and off it goes. Is that something that you consciously think about?

Sarah Matthews
Yeah, when you were saying, so we've obviously got the window open today for the year for a multiplication times table check, I was actually talking to the class about it today. They've had the two weeks off and then the plan is to sort do it next week to give them a week, ease them back into it. But I was talking to them about, yes, this will be how they do on that test on that day.

And one of the year sixers goes, oh, do you remember I did that question wrong? I typed it in. And I remember them typing it in. And they got 24 out of 25. They knew their times tables. He turned around and he said, I just pressed the wrong number. And there was nothing he could do about it.

There was absolutely nothing. And to this day, he's mortified that he's got 24. And I was talking to them about, OK, there is this test. But it's really important. You know your tables. And you know why you need to know your tables. And if you still don't know all those tables and you're not fluent, you know.

And in a mixed age class, they can see what happens that you will be doing additional or you'll need more next year. And that's quite nice. They see why they need it, but they don't necessarily see that they need to get 25 out of 25 on that day. My kind of thinking is that that's what happens on that day. And with technology, et cetera, some people won't necessarily get that, but it will be.

after that day we will still be doing our fluency, will still be doing our times tables because it is so important to you

Adam Gifford
I think it's lovely that they get to see other children in real time that can kind of go, yeah, nothing broke. I'm a bit gutted I pushed the wrong button.

because I know I could have done it, but nothing sinister happened. I didn't break. I'm still allowed to come to school.

Sarah Matthews
Yeah, yeah, it is nice. That is one of the sort of things. And it's like the year fives see the year sixes and they're so supportive of the year sixes doing those tests and they see, you know, but actually it's not that bad.

You know, they go off into the hall into a different room, go and, you know, go and do the tests and they come back and actually they're fine. And we just carry on with the rest of the lessons. You know, we're very much a school, you know, some schools do different. It's like the music teachers come in.

Sarah Matthews
we do the sport in the afternoon. We don't change anything. It's instead of your maths lesson, you've gone and done a maths paper. And you know, they were really excited for the Wednesday because it was two maths papers, double maths.

Robin Potter
Lucky them. Well, the one thing I'm, you know, in Canada, we don't have the same thing. so anyone listening here would be saying, well, what's so what is the purpose? Why are you doing this?

Could you not do it?

Andy Psarianos
I think that's a good question. I think the SATs are not really meant to be, it's more national data, right? It's kind of more for the government than it is for anything else. And while you were speaking, Sarah, I was thinking, what if we just anonymized it? What if we didn't put the children's names on the SATs papers? What difference would that make, right?

What if we didn't put the names of the schools? What if nobody knew what school it came from or would that be better or would it be worse? Right. Because all the anxiety around the SATs is about people's individual performance, you know, but is that, but that's not actually what we're trying to measure.

Right. What we're trying to measure is whether or not the education system is working. I think, or that's what we should be using it for.

You know, but I don't know. It's just, it's just, was just pondering that while you were speaking. I should have been paying closer attention to what you were saying, but my mind did go there.

Sarah Matthews
No, Well, that happens to me. I was thinking, obviously, last year we were, I didn't even realise we were number one school in Wiltshire for our end of Key Stage 2 results. Had a text from somebody in the village saying, Sarah, have you seen, you're on the, you know, front page of the local paper, you've got the highest results.

And I was like, wow, okay. I thought we did, you know, we did good. We generally, our children get the expected levels.

But the funniest thing is this year's year sixes were going, the only way is down. We're number one, what pressure have we got on us now? And I was like, honestly, don't worry about it, honestly. And they were like, yeah, well, last year, you know. But, you know, that's the thing. One year, depending on the cohort, and like I was saying in one of my earlier, when we had the earlier discussion..

That, out of the children that joined us in reception, think, well I know in the current year six, only three of them have been at the school all the way through. So they're going to be judged, our school is going to be judged on, we've had children that can come in in year six or even a little bit before. And that data is not our teaching as a school, it's where they've been before as well. So that can be tricky. So when you're looking at this data, it's fantastic.
You know, we celebrated being number one school, but you know, we're not going to let it go to our heads or anything like that because it can all change. what does it actually mean? Those questions. Absolutely. Yeah.

Andy Psarianos
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the variance, especially when you're a small school, it doesn't even out, right? Just takes a couple of pupils to, to push it one way or another, you know?

Sarah Matthews
I used to teach in a school and it had an autistic centre so quite often I would know before I even started the SATs that I wouldn't get the pass rate because those children weren't taking the papers.

So I'm probably not going to make the percentage because I've got this many people already so it's not a fair system is what I'm saying, I don't think it's fair and that is one of the reasons why most people are not keen on it.

Robin Potter
You heard it. You heard it here, folks. No more SATs. Done. We're done.

Andy Psarianos
No more sets, all right. If everybody does what Sarah does, the world will be a better place.

Robin Potter
Yep, yeah, exactly. Sarah, thanks so much for joining us. You're always a wealth of information, so it's great to have you on.

Sarah Matthews
Thank you for having me. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure. Thank you.