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Video transcript: Securing national standards
- Narrator
- You’ll want to feel confident that your judgments are secure against the national standards and that’s where moderation comes in. Moderation meetings should be part of the school’s assessment cycle, so might take place termly. It may be a discussion with colleagues to check out the teacher’s judgments leading up to in-school moderation.
- Antony
- We weren’t totally sure how to do it in the first place, and then we started saying, ‘Well, can you look at my sheets. I’ve got this evidence – do you think that backs up’ and then that moved onto ‘Well, this child has achieved all these objectives, in which case you can start to look higher up.’
- Teacher
- And where you’ve circled them.
- Antony
- Yeah.
- Teacher
- What does that mean?
- Antony
- I need a little more evidence for much of that. That’s the shapes in different orientations. We’re gonna go onto that next week.
- Debbie
- It’s important that you have those conversations with a colleague – not necessarily a colleague in your own year group, it can be any colleague, because you’re working on the same range of focuses. In the moderation meetings that we’ve had, she’s had a different slant on it.
- Narrator
- In some schools, it may be a meeting of a group of teachers together. At this school, the headteacher attends the meetings, which are part of securing standards in school. The assessment guidelines will give you a shared language to talk about progress and attainment, but whatever the size of the meeting, the important principle is that judgments are supported and either agreed or adjusted if necessary.
- Teacher
- So was that when you highlighted the level 3 judgment…
- Katie
- Yes.
- Teacher
- …which did that, recording ways that may be modelled by the teacher?
- Katie
- Yeah, so that was like in the autumn term really.
- Teacher
- Yeah.
- Michelle
- The highlighters that we used were one for each term, so it’s quite clear when you look at a page that you can see what each colour means, and what the children have achieved within each term. So for example, this term we’re using the orange highlighter, and you can clearly see that there are less marks than there are the others.
- Katie
- I do feel in that strand that maybe we could highlight the appropriate vocabulary that was used confidently, because she actually came out at the end and shared her findings, and the process she went through to the rest of the class, very confidently, using all the correct vocabulary, because ours was linked to perimeters. I do feel as though we could highlight that. Do you agree?
- Teachers
- Yes.
- Katie
- You would want to collect a variety of evidence to support that one statement. You wouldn’t just want one piece of evidence. Collect a range, so that you’re fully secure in that judgment that you’ve made.
- Lin
- We do challenge. We do ask the difficult questions, and teachers are expected to give evidence.
- Teacher
- I just wondered if she’d organised her written work, because that looks quite organised to me.
- Lin
- The evidence is there on that piece there, isn’t it, that she’s organised.
- Katie
- Yeah, well this is one that we did a couple of weeks ago, and this is her organisation of her results.
- Michelle
- And did she do that one independently?
- Katie
- Yes.
- Michelle
- Or was that modelled by the teacher?
- Lin
- See, I think she’s organising her written work. Maybe she’s not doing it from the start…
- Teacher
- No.
- Lin
- But she is able to get there, isn’t she.
- Teachers
- Yeah.
- Lin
- But also it’s not necessarily written evidence, but to talk about what they’ve observed in the classroom.
- Michelle
- He was able to look for a pattern with the cows and the fences.
- Teacher
- Could he explain that to you?
- Michelle
- He could. He could verbally explain it, and he has done in the past, but I wasn’t overly confident before that that was something he was secure in, so I didn’t highlight it, so now he’s shown it to me again so I’m thinking I could probably highlight that statement as well.
- Narrator
- From time to time, local authority moderators visit schools to see how the internal process is shaping up against national standards.
- Cathryn
- You were explaining how you had a difference of opinion here.
- Jane
- Yes, Sally and I actually looked at the same evidence…
- Cathryn
- I come out to schools to work with the teachers that are involved, to look
at their evidence and discuss it, and then we look at the moderation, and
it’s enabling teachers now to use the evidence that they’ve got stored in
their head, as well as the evidence they’re gathering from across the
curriculum.
Did you have a discussion about this, because obviously some of your evidence is things that you’ve got in your head as well? - Jane
- Yes, a lot of it is.What I tend to do is, particularly with the reading sessions, I’ll just make quick Post-it notes.
- Jane
- You can actually go and have a meeting with the LA, and chat about where you’re going to take your evidence this next time, whether you’ve got any problems, if you’re finding evidence difficult to get, and they’ve been extremely supportive.
- Cathryn
- Teachers that have been involved with the project have been really impressed with how it’s helped focus their teaching so that the children know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re very much part of the learning process.
[Music]
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- Video transcript: Securing national standards
