Assessing Progress Towards Outcomes

In all circumstances, Early Years’ settings, schools, colleges and other providers should ensure that the quality of provision is reviewed regularly and its impact on children with special educational needs (SEN) monitored.

Age and prior attainment are the starting points for developing expectations of pupils’ progress

Early Years’ Settings

When a child is aged between 2 and 3, Early Years practitioners must review progress and provide parents with a short written summary of their child’s development, focusing in particular on:

  • communication and language
  • physical development
  • personal, social and emotional development

Early Years settings should adopt a graduated approach of assessment, planning and reviewing their actions with increasing frequency, to identify the best way of securing good progress.

Settings are expected to have a member of staff who acts as Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCo). A maintained nursery must ensure that there is a qualified teacher designated SENCo in order to ensure the detailed implementation of support for children with SEN.

Primary and Secondary Schools

The progress of all pupils should be measured on a regular basis and plans established to help them achieve their targets. The outcome could be short-term i.e. what they can realistically be expected to achieve within 12 months; or long -term i.e. what they need to achieve so that they no longer require an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC Plan). A parent should always be able to make an appointment with their child’s teacher or head teacher at any point if they have any concerns.

Pupils at ages 5 and 7 (Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1) are assessed by their teachers and need to show sustained performance over time and in a range of situations in order to be assessed as achieving a certain standard. The local authority’s (LA) role is to quality assure the process and support moderation of assessments amongst teachers in order to ensure consistency and confidence in the judgements.
Phonics screening check was introduced in 2011/12 and it is a statutory assessment for all children in year 1 (aged 6). It assesses whether a pupil has met the required standard of phonic decoding or not.

At age 11 (Key Stage 2), National curriculum assessments are made through testing and teacher assessment, providing complementary information about pupils’ attainment. The vast majority of pupils are measured by one-off tests in maths, reading, grammar, spelling and punctuation taken over a week in May. These tests are externally marked. Some pupils are not entered for the tests if their current assessed level of attainment is too low to enable them to access the tests. Recent changes to the KS2 assessment programme nationally meant that the writing task is assessed by pupils’ teachers. The LA quality assures and supports the moderation of this process.
Public examinations start at ages 15 and 17+ (Key Stages 4 and 5). Results are currently achieved through a combination of one-off examinations and coursework.

Colleges/Further Education

All young people with additional needs should have access to a wide range of study programmes and support at all levels to enable them to achieve good life outcomes. Colleges should ensure that students are on an appropriate course and they may wish to undertake their own assessments to gauge suitability of a particular study programme.
Colleges should have access to specialist skills to support SEN students when required, either through partnerships, or by employing practitioners to help students to progress. They should provide additional support to SEN students in a way that promotes their independence and encourages successful progression into adult life.
Further education providers should record details of additional or different provision to meet a young person’s special educational needs and monitor their progress towards achieving specified outcomes. This information should be used as part of regular discussions with the young person, (and, where necessary, their parents) about his or her progress, the expected outcomes from the support provided and the planned next steps.

All education providers have an obligation to do the following:

  • Continually monitor and review pupils’ progress on a regular basis and seek to identify pupils making less than expected progress given their age and individual circumstances
  • For pupils in Year 1 and above, but not at National Curriculum levels, schools must use a more sensitive assessment tool to show smaller, but significant steps of progress
  • Formally assess pupils at the end of each key stage (i.e. at the end of year 2, year 6, year 11) using Standard Assessment Tests (SATS) or public examinations. This is something the government requires all schools to do and it is these results that are published nationally
  • Undertake a formal Annual Review of the progress of pupils with a statement of SEND/EHC Plan, which should include all adults involved with a pupil’s education
  • Ensure that the SENCo checks that your child is making good progress with any individual work and any group in which they participate.

Useful Links

Identifying Special Educational Needs

Education, Health and Care Plan

Schools

Education Transitions

Preparing for Adulthood