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Ruth James outlines a personal perspective

As an NQT, I was given a piece of invaluable advice by a Key Stage one colleague who had spent most of her teaching career in public schools where parents' demands for knowing the progress of their child at the end of each day, had impacted on her teaching. She said:

'The key to teaching is to assess everything, all the time!'

As an enthusiastic, conscientious, and naïve young teacher I diligently aimed to follow her motivating anecdote. I practised the process of assessment consistently and thoroughly in order to be effective and efficient. However, I came to realise that the way to facilitate assessment was equally as important as what was being assessed, and I began to group children carefully (in order to reshape tasks) into those that needed further support, and those that needed further challenge. During this process of assessing, the importance of clear and precise knowledge and skills based learning intentions, and an accurate system to record my findings helped me to build a story for each child. Constant assessment from tasks selected to show understanding, so essential for progress monitoring and parent consultations, gave me an accurate picture of attainment. Designing, or sourcing, tasks to adhere to clear learning objectives and continually practising assessment, I evidenced the significance of clear-targeted feedback for immediate impact and to encourage a growth mind-set (Dweck 2006).

As the UK Government has removed the requirement for levelled data, except for the end of key stage currently, it allows the class teacher to assess a child without imposing a 'best fit' type sublevelled judgement using the National Curriculum or local educational authority level descriptors such as a 4C or 3A, at half termly recording intervals, throughout the year. The 'old' assessment culture of assessing using level descriptors did perhaps not give a true picture of an individual's mathematical understanding. The new National Curriculum (2013) does not refer to assessment, only to attainment targets:

'By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study'.

The Key Stages are split into Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2....

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