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Assessments

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Students’ classwork is assessed regularly as part of our teaching approach which encourages children to see learning as a series of steps: the receipt and recall of information, followed by its application, analysis and creative response. Consequently, we seek to assess our students’ abilities in each of these areas, as well as simply grading their final answers..

We therefore teach and support students in their attempts to understand and remember facts, features, equations and methods of operations, and to be creative when a situation demands flair or ingenuity. Receiving information with an attentive mind is seen as the fundamental first step towards academic understanding, and it frequently demands the memorisation of information, which is relatively easy to test.

The second step involves not only being able to retrieve such information but also being able to apply it in unfamiliar situations and to blend it with other relevant knowledge in order to reach a solution. This is a more complex process than simple memorization, but it is also a key focus when assessing a child's academic intelligence.
The third step involves reflection and the analysis of why certain outcomes occur, enabling children to imagine what might happen if certain circumstances or variables were to change or be changed. Of course, in some circumstances, the response to information is the creative outburst of new ideas, expression, literature, artworks or other invention.
Assessments therefore take various guises, in order to capture how well a child is managing these various steps of learning. Sometimes we will set a written test of factual knowledge and at other times we will set problems to be solved, opinions to be formed, and analysis to be given. We will also set open-ended activities which just allow children to explore ideas, situations, patterns and opinions, encouraging them to think, rather than necessarily come up with answers.
There will be times we need to develop their processing powers, before we can expect them to arrive at a perfect product.
There will also be times when we just want to release their creative flair.
Similarly, marking will sometimes be RIGHT or WRONG, and sometimes it will measure the extent to which knowledge is applied correctly in the search for a solution. In the final example, the work may not even be marked in the conventional sense at all. It may just receive comments, observations and further questions, in order to stimulate further valuable learning.
In the first type of assessment, children are either completely right or completely wrong; in the second type, they can gain marks for the journey they take towards the solution, even if they do not manage to arrive at the complete answer. As far as the third type of activity is concerned, there may be no Grade applied at all.
Parents will soon come to learn which type of exercise a child has been given to work on, and so they will also know how it is being assessed.

Formative Assessment

Students will be assessed as they work through topics and challenges in class, not always with a formal mark but through the teacher noticing, reinforcing, correcting and commenting on how well they are grasping the work in hand. This form of assessment looks at the processes of learning and how well a child is accumulating the knowledge and skills which will be needed when the final examination comes along. It is also known as Formative Assessment and teachers do not always give specific marks for work done in this process as it is part of a journey and not the destination.

Summative Assessment

The culmination of this journey is the final test, typically at the end of a block of work, at the end of Term or in the End of Year Examination. This is when all of the work done on a topic is complete and the student is ready to be examined on all they have learned, in recall, application, analysis and/or creative response. This is known as Summative Assessment and it will result in a final Grade.

There are two key Summative Assessment periods for every child, every year. These are held at

the end of the Winter Term (December) and
the end of the Academic Year (June).

The end of year examinations in June form part of the decision whether or not to approve each child’s promotion into the next Year Group in September, but a student’s work THROUGHOUT THE YEAR will also be taken into consideration when making this decision.

It will be made clear to students, in advance, what topics and skills will be tested in each of their Summative Assessments, so that they are focused on how to prepare and what to revise.

PLEASE NOTE : The Summer Assessments for IGCSEs and A LEVELS can start as early as late April and carry through May and June.

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Assessment Integrity

Online assessments will always rely on the trust between home and school, to ensure that the work submitted has been prepared solely by the child, without them accessing any outside help from other people or from notes which should not be referred to once the assessment is underway.

We have various technologies and procedures in place to ensure that all of our assessments are valid, but parents will be asked to ensure that these conditions are fully met. We also make use of spoken assessments to ensure that children can explain their answers to us and can therefore prove to us the depth and extent of their understanding.

The core purpose of assessments in TGBS is for us to discover how much a child is able to understand, remember and apply, so that we can help them improve and succeed in their final examinations. Parents have a key part to play in this, and therefore in your child’s ultimate success.

PLEASE NOTE:

The Summer Assessments for IGCSEs and A LEVELS are taken as Examinations run by Cambridge International. They are taken under formal examination conditions, in British Council premises or in a Cambridge International School near to where the child lives. These Examinations are not taken online.