Wednesday, May 28, 2008
New guidance and funding to support Assessment for Learning
New guidance has been published by the DCSF to support schools in embedding AfL successfully .
The UK government has published new guidance on the Assessment for Learning Strategy with an intention to have personalised learning and assessment for learning in all schools. The committment is backed by £150 million funding for the CPD of teachers over the next three years.
The key principle of Assessment for Learning is that pupils will progress best if they understand; the aim of their learning, where they are in relation to this aim and how to achieve the aim.
The new guidance states clearly that focused, useful and reliable assessment needs to be integral to all teaching and learning. The strategy requires peer and self-assessment to be in day-to-day use in schools. Peer assessment can no longer be seen as an added extra or project for some schools to experiment with, the government has placed it at the centre of everyday provision and assessment in it’s strategies and reccomendations. Every school will receive funding to help establish effective AfL in their school.
The Chartered Institute of Educational Assesors have developed a Professional Framework of Assessment which highlights the skills and competencies needed to develop teacher assesment skills and meaningful personalised learning. The reccomendation is for each school to have one or two lead teachers to implement AfL.
The vision for success is when aschool has embedded AfL and personalised learning successfully:
Every child knows how they are doing, and understands what they need to do to improve and how to get there. They get support they need to be motivated, independent learners on an ambitious trajectory of improvement.
Every teacher is equipped to make well-founded judgements about pupil’s attainment, understands the concepts and principles of progression, and knows how to use their assessment judgements to forward plan, particularly for pupils who are not fulfilling their potential.
Every School has in place structured and systematic assessment systems for making regular, useful, manageable and accurate assessments of pupils, and for tracking their progress.
Every parent and carer knows how their child is doing, what they need to do to improve, and how they can support their child and the teachers.
"The project findings indicate that fundamental to developing AfL in the classroom is developing the independent learner, and fundamental to developing the leadership and management of whole school change is developing distributed leadership"
To visit the DCSF site containing the links to resources click here