Assessment

At DESC we believe that ‘classroom assessment is absolutely central to the teaching and learning process’. It must be collaborative and focused.

Assessment must be an interactive process. Teachers need to know about their existing students’ progress and difficulties with learning so that they can adapt their work to meet their needs – needs which are often unpredictable and which vary from one student to another. 

Therefore, assessment is the process by which students, teachers and parents are able to make judgements that allow them to monitor progress, evaluate the learning experience, improve planning, diagnose difficulties, identify progression, assist personalisation and improve the quality of teaching and learning.

DESC produces rigorous and comprehensive reports regarding student attainment and progress across all year groups. Using our online data tracking platform - Go4Schools - we ensure that all data is 'live' and reflects students' current attainment across the curriculum. At Key Stage 3, both formative and summative assessments are undertaken by students across all of their subjects in order to track and monitor their progress. At Key Stages 4 and 5, the Curriculum and Assessment Calendar methodically maps out students' assessment journey through each GCSE and A level specification.

We send home three Progress Reports per year group. These Progress Reports allow students and parents to review performance in terms attainment, progress and attitude to learning (A2L's). In addition, Parent Consultation Evenings are meticulously calendared for each year group teachers to provide carefully personalised and tailored feedback on both strengths and areas for development. 

There is a whole-school system in place for marking, which focuses upon providing useful and effective written feedback for students, called ‘Box & Bubble’. This aims to identify areas that have proved successful (Box) and a steer on how the work might have been improved (Bubble).

The purpose of marking should:-

  • improve learning
  • provide feedback to student and teacher
  • help teacher and student to identify strengths and weaknesses which is constructive and informative to future work
  • be frequent and regular
  • provide opportunities within the lesson for Assessment for Learning, so students crucially know how to improve