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In turn, Martyn and Hannah outline the way their West Sussex schools have tackled assessment without levels and review each other's models.
The removal of numbered assessment levels offered schools an exciting opportunity to design an assessment system which was both more relevant to students and emphasised the real value of assessment. Durrington High School and The Angmering School both developed new systems, closely linked but with significant differences. Durrington High School is a large (approximately 1750 students) secondary school located in the suburbs of Worthing. The Angmering School is a large rural comprehensive school in the village of Angmering. Both schools have similar mixed socio-economic student intakes, ranging from very well-off backgrounds to those with significant social and economic challenges. The Angmering School has a Special Educational Needs unit, and a number of students with physical and mental disabilities. The Durrington High School approach was developed in the context of the Department for Education's (DfE) assessment pilot project, whereas The Angmering School developed their approach simply from the school's perspective.
The Durrington High School approach, by Martyn Simmonds
Durrington High School's new 'Assessment without levels' approach has been designed to allow teachers to regain control of their assessments and focus on the core concepts and skills they believe are essential to their subject. Our 'Growth and threshold' assessment model allows for an easier transition to key stage 4 by placing greater emphasis during key stage 3 on the skills and core knowledge needed at key stage 4. It develops and broadens students' geographical understanding, at the same time adhering to a five-year plan for success at the end of key stage 4 (Figure 1).
The Durrington 'Growth and threshold' model has four thresholds: Excellence, Secure, Developing and Foundation and is loosely linked to the structure of observed learning outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy approach (Figure 2).
Growth and threshold
On entering the school each student is assigned a 'baseline threshold', which is the minimum threshold students will be expected to reach by the end of key stage 3. To avoid 'labelling' them or setting an artificial ceiling on their progress, students are not told of this threshold; instead, after each assessment and at each reporting phase, they are told whether their progress is better than,...