Reporting and Assessment

Interim Reports

Twice a year, students will receive either an 'Interim Report' or a 'Target-setting Report.' Interim reports exclusively consist of data and serve the purpose of keeping parents and carers informed about the progress of their child.

Target Setting Report

In our ‘Target-setting Report’, every subject teacher formulates two targets for each student, serving the dual purposes of:

1. Identifying Areas for Improvement: Precisely identifying specific aspects where students can improve their performance.
2. Stating Action Needed: Clearly outlining the actions required to facilitate improvement in the identified areas.

Subject teachers craft these targets based on areas for improvement identified through assessed work and diagnostic feedback. It is crucial that these targets are tailored to the specific needs of each student.

Please take note: If a subject class is handled by more than one teacher, the respective teacher's name will be included at the end of each target.

Methods of Assessment

Students will undertake a variety of different assessments over the course of their school career. These include classwork, homework, tests, projects, coursework, oral and practicals.

Assessment can take many forms including:

1. Teacher assessment: this is where teachers make judgements on the performance of students. This may be in the form of:
   1. Assessment AS learning: where teachers use regular routine quizzes, tests and exercises to build memory to automaticity through over-learning of facts, concepts and procedures. Such testing is usually informal and low stakes and is part of the learning process.
   2. Assessment FOR learning: where teachers use formative assessment e.g. via questioning, feedback on mini whiteboards or through examining students’ work during lessons. Such informal assessment can provide finer-grained analysis of students’ progress.
   3. Assessment OF learning: where teachers assess for summative purposes; for example, through end of unit assessments, assessment weeks or mocks. These will be common assessments meaning that all students studying the subject will receive the same assessment.
2. Self-assessment: this is where students are trained to use the success criteria/marking scheme to mark their own work so that their understanding of how teachers and examiners assess, improves. Understanding this process helps students to tackle subsequent assessments more effectively.
3. Peer-assessment: this is where students are given the success criteria/marking scheme and mark the work of other students. The rationale is the same as for self-assessment; but students can often be more objective when applying the mark scheme to unfamiliar work.

Reasons for Assessment

Assessments are useful for a variety of reasons:

1. To enable teachers to:
   • monitor the progress of individuals and of the group as a whole
   • identify gaps in knowledge and understanding which will help teachers to re-shape planning for individuals as well as the group as a whole
   • give appropriate feedback to students to support their progress
   • give positive praise and encouragement to students
2. To enable students to:

• develop skills, consolidate knowledge and understanding and improve their organisation as a learner
• develop the confidence that they have understood the work they are doing in class and to know if there is an issue that they need to resolve
• benchmark their performance against their targets

KS3 - How are judgements made?

Departments have identified the knowledge, skills and aptitudes needed in their subject for a student to be ‘meeting’ Finchley Catholic High School expectations by the end of Key Stage 3.

From this, departments have identified the knowledge, skills and aptitudes needed in their subject for a student to be:

• ‘exceeding’ Finchley Catholic High School expectations by the end of each year
• ‘developing’ towards meeting Finchley Catholic High School expectations by the end of each year
• at ‘foundation’ level in terms of Finchley Catholic High School expectations by the end of each year

Assessments which are set for the whole cohort will be graded according to this criteria and targets set which will support students to make further progress.

KS4 / KS5 - How are judgements made?

Predicted Grades

A predicted grade is a grade that the teacher believes an individual student will achieve in the final GCSE or ALEVEL examinations, given the assessment evidence they currently hold on that student.

At an earlier stage of the course, the student may not yet be working at the level of the prediction, but as the student moves closer to the final exam period, the gap between the grade the student is working at and their prediction will narrow. The teacher will use their judgement of what students producing similar work with similar learning habits have typically achieved in previous years when making their judgement. However, this performance needs to be sustained over time if this grade is to become a reality and therefore should not be considered a definite minimum outcome.

Fine Grades

Predicted grades will be ‘fine graded’ which means that each subjects will have a letter attached indicating how securely a student falls into that particular grade band; for example, a Grade 5A will indicate a strong Grade 5, with the potential to move up to Grade 6, a Grade 5B will indicate a solid Grade 5 and a Grade 5C is just within the Grade 5 grade band, so there is a risk that it will fall into the lower grade band.

Behaviour for Learning

Our Behaviour for Learning (BfL) continuum is a learning concept that aims to support students with establishing positive relationships between self, others and the curriculum. When these three elements are promoted and nurtured in unison in a classroom, a culture of positive learning behaviour is embraced. 

At data reports this grade is awarded for work done ‘in class ‘and ‘out of class’.