What is Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP)?

What are the benefits of APP?

School leaders and teachers who have been involved in the APP pilots have identified the following key benefits.

  • It does not require special assessment activities but involves recognising significant evidence from the opportunities generated by planned teaching and learning.
  • It reduces the need to use tests and specific assessment tasks to make assessment judgements by taking into account a far wider range of evidence. This gives a clearer and more accurate picture of learners’ achievements and progress.
  • It provides a valuable opportunity for professional development as it gives teachers effective tools to develop their assessment and teaching techniques.
  • It provides a common framework for teachers to share and discuss the evidence they have of learners’ progress, to build assessment expertise and develop confidence.
  • It directly informs discussions with pupils and future planning, teaching and learning.
  • It helps teachers identify gaps in their teaching. For example, when a periodic assessment showed little evidence of a particular assessment focus, teachers from the pilot found that APP influenced their planning and pedagogy.

Watch what pilot school leaders and teachers think are the benefits of the APP approach.

Whole-school impact: better learners and better teachers

You need to have JavaScript enabled to view embedded video content within this site. As an alternative you can download the video file by accessing the download page from the Attachments and Resources section on this page. You will then be able to play the video locally. Both Quicktime (.MOV) and Windows Media Format (.WMV) versions are provided.

The table below provides a summary of typical changes in assessment practice made by teachers in the pilots.

Practice before APP Practice after APP
  • define progress through tests
  • assess progress in relation to key AFs for mathematics and reading and writing, identified as relevant for a pupil or group of pupils
  • have a clearer idea of pupils' strengths and weaknesses and gaps in their experience
  • use commercial tests and optional National Curriculum tests
  • observe pupils making choices of books in the library; listen to group discussions of texts
  • use work in drama based on reading
  • use spoken and written evidence
  • observe pupils selecting the mathematics to solve a problem
  • test word and sentence level skills
  • make assessments of vocabulary and sentence structure and accuracy in different pieces of writing
  • use spelling tests
  • make some assessments of spelling across a range of writing
  • level individual pieces of writing, twice per term using a bank of examples
  • collect evidence from four to six pieces of writing from different subjects
  • assess across the range using AFs
  • assess through pupils' written mathematics exercises
  • gather evidence in starters and plenaries and as pupils work in groups
  • talk to pupils to find out more about how they tackle problems as well as whether they get the answer
  • observe how pupils use their mathematics in design and technology and science
  • few Ma1 assessments made
  • start to include more problem solving in lessons to teach skills and processes, as well as assess them
  • become aware that assessing Ma1 may give a different insight into pupils' understanding of the content

Comments

Would you like to comment?

Register for an account, or log in if you are already a member

In this section

  • What are the benefits of APP?

Attachments

Learning objectives

See also

Help

Show all Help