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ASSESSING PUPILS' PROGRESS


Assessing Pupils’ Progress – support or imposition?

Teachers need to have control over whether and how to use Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP). John Bangs, NUT assistant secretary for education, equality and professional development,
explains how the NUT has successfully fought to ensure that APP remains voluntary and is a help rather than a burden to teachers.

What is Assessing Pupils’ Progress?

As many teachers know already, Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP) is a structured system of teacher assessment. The focus is on teachers being expected to make judgements about their pupils’ progress according to ‘assessment focuses’. Each level is divided into three categories: low, secure and high. Assessments are made by teachers against a statement in each assessment focus.

Teachers are expected to provide examples of pupils’ work to show how they have arrived at specific levels. As an assessment tool, APP can be useful, but decisions on its use must be made in full consulation with teachers.

What’s the problem with APP?

The first problem is that, in a range of policy documents, the government and the National Strategies have implied that APP is a requirement for each school, rather than being voluntary. The National Strategies’ annual plan, for example, contains an emphasis on “embedding APP and ensuring schools which have not got to grips with APP are supported to do so”.

The suggestion that APP is compulsory is simply not true. It has, however, led to a second problem, which is that local authorities and some school leaders have been promoting this misapprehension in schools. In addition, many local authorities have told schools that nothing less than the production of evidence for every pupil level under every assessment focus – in English and mathematics particularly – is good enough. For some teachers, this has meant an exponential increase in workload.

A snapshot survey of teachers conducted by the NUT yielded such comments as:

“Training indicates all children in each class will be assessed in a running assessment, ie weekly and summarised termly in English, mathematics and science…”

“APP is being rolled out as compulsory, not voluntary.”
“APP is very time-consuming and intensive.”

What has the NUT done about the misuse of APP?

As soon as we discovered the extent of the misuse of APP, the NUT acted immediately. Anger about the excessive workload created by APP was reflected in a motion agreed at this year’s annual conference. At the NUT’s instigation, a meeting was convened by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which also involved representatives of other teacher organisations and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). The NUT made it clear that it was not prepared to put up with excessive workload arising from APP, and that its use had to be subject to the professional judgement of teachers.

A statement, Assessing Pupils’ Progress: Manageability (see opposite), was agreed between the NUT, the other teacher associations, the QCA and the DCSF. It contains a key paragraph which emphasises that the use of APP is voluntary, that any implementation of APP should be the subject of discussion and consultation with staff, and that schools can adapt APP for their particular circumstances.

The statement also makes it clear that APP can replace optional and end-of-unit tests and that it reduces the need to “prepare for, set and mark time-consuming tests and assessment tasks”.

A second meeting of the working group affirmed that APP should be seen as a ‘lean and mean’ way of doing teacher assessment.

Even Ofsted has emphasised that it “does not prescribe how learners should be assessed”, but that, “inspectors should investigate whether any system is effective in promoting better learning…”

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