​We've been blown away by the brilliant way in which the entire education community have responded to this challenge, and we want to do whatever we can to continue offering our support.
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Our team are on hand to help you with whatever you need, but right now we'd especially like to offer help in sharing information between teachers and parents, and with increasing our capacity to deliver free, remote training to any of our users.

​Thank you to all schools who are doing an amazing job under extreme pressure. We appreciate that there is still plenty of work to be done after schools shut today and rest assured that we will be here as normal to offer support in any way we can. Now might be the time to investigate what more Incerts can do for you, and we are offering free remote training to any of our users who would like it.

We understand the importance of keeping our systems operational during this time and they will be kept protected and maintained as usual so you will be able to continue to use Incerts for assessment, analysis and report creation. Our Support Team are always on hand to help you with any challenges you face regarding remote working and electronic sharing especially.

We haven’t forgotten about the new curriculum and will continue to work on developing a system which will support this ready for 2022. We will be getting creative with coordinating with our focus groups to ensure we are meeting the needs of everyone.
 
We will aim to keep schools updated on the latest issues so please continue to check our blog and twitter feeds. We will also be in contact shortly in the normal way regarding report writing but please get in touch if you would prefer to get them generated before then.

Stay safe and well, and keep in touch.

It has been almost exactly five years since Graham Donaldson's Successful Futures report was published in March 2015, and on 28th January we finally were able to see the results of the years of co-construction, consultation and review. When we read the consultation feedback in October 2019, I was pleased to see the strong degree of consensus between our views and those of the respondents. There are a number of significant changes that have come about as a result, and I'll examine them here.

The new curriculum becomes statutory in September 2022 for children up to Year 7. Although current assessment arrangements remain in place until then, the focus of the next eighteen months will very much be on the future. Kath Lewis, the Strategic Lead for Expressive Arts in CSC, described the process as follows:

"We are by no means in a sprint to 2022, but perhaps more of a cross-country jog! There are many different routes that can be taken, and from a vast number of starting points. Some routes may appear easy, promising a flat, direct course, others may appear to offer quick wins with short cuts. What is certain is that no two schools will take the same route and that each will most likely need to stop, regroup and take stock before reaching a metaphorical – or actual – finish line!

​So, what's changed?
A mere glance at the contents page can tell you how many pages have been cut from the document. This is a very satisfying change. There were heavy degrees of repeated content in the drafts, which obscured rather than revealed the detail.

There is also greater uniformity of content in each AOLE chapter, one example being the Principles of Progression (that will be statutorily enshrined as the Progression Code). Each AOLE is now prefaced by five headings describing how the skills progress along the continuum. (That is, five of the six - Mathematics and Numeracy have forged their own path.)

Overall though, there is a greater degree in consistency, with the different approaches cherry-picked from the best the draft had to offer. There have been small casualties in imposing this uniformity - for example the Expressive Arts had a very effective definition of progress that is now perhaps a little less brilliant for the change in format. 
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​The most striking visual difference between the draft and final version of the curriculum is the presentation of the Achievement Outcomes - or should I say descriptors, for the former terminology is nowhere to be seen. The descriptors are now laid out horizontally in a grid, from Progression Step 1 to 5. 

The Science and Technology team have gone a little further, and merged some of their grid boxes to give a greater clarity of the continuum through the Steps. These groupings are not strict assessment ladders with a hierarchy of one step to the next, but rather collections of statements. This is in keeping with our exploration of the descriptors, where skills blend and combine as children gain more sophisticated control of them.

What will be important in forming assessments around these Progression Steps is ensuring lateral, not vertical progress is prioritised, and that pupils engage in interlinked learning across the AOLEs.
There are some clear changes within individual AOLEs too. LLC is still by far the largest in size, but now shows a distinct difference in content. Translanguaging now appears far less frequently (and is mercifully put in simpler terms), and early reading strategies and SPAG are now more thoroughly fleshed out. Humanities has also had a dramatic makeover, with a decimation of the number of statements, especially at Progression Step 5.

Interestingly, the Four Purposes have perhaps taken less of a centre-stage in the final version. If this has a side-effect of deterring those putting these overarching aims into percentages and pie charts, it can only be a good thing.

Building your assessment
There are people already selling their 'ready-made' assessments and schemes to sit alongside Curriculum 2022. I applaud the surely Herculean efforts they must have gone to to achieve this within mere hours of the release of the final curriculum (especially given the volume of change, not limited to the above), but I fear that in their eagerness to please, they may have skipped the chapter on schools developing their own curriculum and assessment. For those who missed it, the help can be found on pages 21-47.

Formative assessment sits loudly and clearly at the heart of this new curriculum, and indeed, "Assessment arrangements at a school level are a matter for each school to determine as part of designing their own curriculum" (p230). This is not a task to be underestimated, in time nor in scope. Anyone hoping for - or indeed selling - a quick fix is spitting in the face of the opportunity to take the time to do this well not fast. It would be a great shame for schools to cut themselves out of a process that belongs to them.

Where do we go from here?
Now that the final version of the curriculum is available, we'll be working with schools to discuss how they intend to build their curriculum and assessment arrangements. Areas of investigation will include:
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• Striking a balance between moderation, consistency, and the need to build a curriculum that's fitting to each school context.
• Prioritising depth and interlinked assessment over onward progress.
• Transition between primaries and secondaries under differing curricula.
• Features of the new assessment system.

​We'll discuss these issues, and others, with our focus group of schools, and you'll hear more from us as we work towards sharing our developments with all schools using Incerts from September 2020.

​Join us
If you're interested in contributing to our work, please get in touch at wales2022@assessmentfoundation.org, or you can join our feedback group here.

Lucy Ridley, Chief Operations Officer

Hopefully you've all had an enjoyable summer break and have landed without too much of a bump into Autumn term. I'd like to update you on the work we've been doing over the summer at the Assessment Foundation, looking in further depth at the draft curriculum for 2022.

What we've found
It will be of no surprise that we've been looking at the structure of the new curriculum, most particularly the area of assessment. Whist the curriculum remains in draft form (the consultation closed upon the 19th July and we're awaiting the government's response), it has been of great interest to finally see and engage with what has been provided so far. The Pioneer Schools and steering groups should be rightly proud of what they have produced. 

I have principally examined the Achievement Outcomes - the ‘I can’ and ‘I have’ statements - staged across five Progression Steps and arranged under What Matters statements. What immediately struck me was the great level of attention to detail that has been paid to the relationships between assessment statements. This is not news, of course - skills and knowledge are as interconnected as they are diverse. However, it is pleasing to see the connections made explicit. This will support practitioners in connecting learning experiences together, especially those getting to grips with sharing their subject disciplines at secondary (this vlog by Olchfa school is a great example).

The sheer size and complexity of the AoLE documents is their most striking feature. The documents are meaty, and the concepts are not small. One feels quite relieved that schools have until 2022 to implement this curriculum - understanding and absorbing the content alone will be challenge enough before you even come to the fact that what is provided is a broad framework to cover three-year stages. There are gaps to be filled, but first schools must get to grips with the size and shape of those gaps.

• There's a clear emphasis upon the purposes of the curriculum within the achievement outcome statements themselves, that perhaps comes out most strongly in the way in which environmental and societal issues are highlighted across the AoLEs.
• Health and Wellbeing also does an excellent job of describing progression in terms of increased self-regulation, social responsibility, and the emotional toolbox with which to handle one's own health and wellbeing and to respect those of others.
• Expressive Arts is the more constricted AoLE in size - it comprises the smallest number of What Matters statements, and achievement outcomes within that. Many statements cover a range of creative activities, rather than separating out progression in art, music etc. This could be problematic where practitioners are less knowledgeable or confident in understanding what progress to look for, or how to advance diverse skills and interests.
• The statements are written in the form of 'I can' and 'I have', but simply adding these prefixes does not a child-friendly statement make. I've yet to meet the five year old who'd say 'I can use my visual sense of number to make estimates and comparisons', and I'm not sure I'd like to encounter such an unnatural being. There is room for improvement in making this accessible to younger children - and I hope that these statements will be trialled with children before they are finalised.

 
So, shark infested waters? No - but perhaps more like diving through a kelp forest. At first all that is evident is the mass of seaweed, but as one becomes accustomed to the light, layers of depth, little habitats, and areas of beauty appear. A rewarding result of what is undoubtedly a significant effort.

What we're doing next
We're planning to work more closely with schools on the draft curriculum, so we can harness the brilliant practice in Welsh education to steer the next generation of assessment in schools.
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We're launching Assessment Foundation Curriculum Feedback Group to:

• Share our work so far.
• Ask questions about what you're doing to prepare for the 2022 curriculum.
• Listen to what you want from us in terms of assessment.

 
The localisation of assessment is both a challenge and an amazing opportunity for us to support assessment in new and exciting ways, and we want to get the best picture possible of what schools need.

"I'm very interested to work alongside the Assessment Foundation to investigate ways of developing a quality child centred assessment tool that would accurately support the new curriculum."
- Colin Jenkins, Headteacher, Buttington-Trewern Primary School

Whilst we work with 72% of primary schools in Wales, the Assessment Foundation have also worked with a number of secondary and 3-19 schools, supporting transition and assessment up to Y9. We plan to roll out our new assessment system to secondary schools also.

We know that schools are busy, and what's more, that there is a constant stream of messages arriving about Curriculum 2022. So joining will be opt-in. We'll still keep everyone up to date with major developments, but we'll only contact those who join the mailing list to ask questions and take feedback.

​With the Common Inspection Framework from Estyn (September 2017) there has been a shift towards analysing progress made in school. Inspectors look at progress made in the current academic year, across the Key Stage/Phase and since starting school.
Incerts can help you monitor progress, identify pupils falling behind, and put interventions in place to drive forward learning. Our Help & Advice section has lots of ideas to help, in particular the Tracking Progress page.
 
The Year 3 conundrum
Incerts uses a pupil’s scores from the end of the previous year as the starting point from which to record current year progress – without a ‘previous score’, progress cannot be measured. Normally, this isn’t a problem because pupils are usually assessed against the same descriptors year-to-year. However, when a pupil moves from being assessed against Outcomes in the Foundation Phase to Levels in Key Stage 2, things get a little bit tricky.
 
With the *old* descriptors, Outcomes 4, 5 and 6 “aligned” with Levels 1, 2 and 3. Whilst the link was tentative and much debated, Incerts was able to transfer information to aid progress tracking in Year 3.
 
Then, Welsh Government produced “recalibrated Outcomes” in 2015 when the Reception Baseline was introduced. Last year was the first year where pupils were assessed against these more challenging descriptors at the end of Year 2, and then transitioned to KS2 Levels in Year 3 – as expected, it has thrown up a variety of issues!
 
Following this change, the ‘alignment’ has been completely broken and Year 3 teachers will always begin the year with no Year 2 ticks on the Assess pages. Consequently, there is no ‘previous score’ on the same scale, and so Incerts has no starting point for measuring progress in Year 3.
 
In order to accurately demonstrate pupils’ progress in Year 3, we therefore recommend setting an ‘on-entry’ assessment at the beginning of Year 3. The obvious benefit is that you’ll create a ‘previous score’ for each pupil, against the same descriptors (KS2 Levels) – you’ll then be comparing like with like.
 
So how can I do this on Incerts?
We’ve developed a way for teachers to record an initial assessment for pupils in Year 3, and then push it back to create this starting point.
 
At the beginning of the year, Year 3 teachers should spend some time observing their new pupils, and if possible, work with the Year 2 teacher to establish what they can do. When ready, teachers should record their initial assessments on Incerts (this will have an impact on workload of course, so your school may decide to do this in literacy and numeracy only, or just the core subjects, for example).
 
Once recorded, someone with Admin rights must set the assessments as the starting point. They need to go to Edit and then Edit School, and hover over the ‘advanced feature’ next to the Set On-Entry button and click the link that appears.

​This takes you to a new page where you should follow these steps:

     ​1. Select “All of Yr 3” in the “Class/Group” dropdown
     ​2. Tick boxes for the pupils you wish to create a starting point for (or Select All)
     ​3. Press Move Ticks

     ​4. Read the message and tick the box to confirm you have understood the warning
     ​5. Confirm the operation
  
All assessments recorded to this point in Year 3 will then be pushed back so that they appear in the previous year (i.e. Year 2). Teachers will notice that the ticks will have changed from the green colour (denoting Year 3) to orange (Year 2), and they will be able to record pupils’ progress through the rest of the year against this starting point.
 
Setting an ‘On-Entry’ Assessment for Nursery PupilsSchools with a Foundation Phase will already be aware of the process for setting the Reception Baseline on Incerts. But some schools also have a Nursery setting, and since Estyn might be interested in seeing progress “since starting school”, it can be useful to record an ‘On-Entry’ assessment when Nursery pupils start at your school.
 
To do this, Nursery teachers need to record what pupils can do when they first start at the school. Then, much like the process described above for Year 3, someone with Admin Right needs to set the assessments as the starting point.
 
For the new pupils that start in September, simply click the Set On-Entry button on Edit School.
 
The Set On-Entry button can only be pressed once each academic year. So, for late starters or staggered intakes, you will need an extra step to record their On-Entry positions:

1. Again, someone with Admin rights needs to go to Edit and then Edit School
2. Hover over the ‘advanced feature’ next to the (now greyed out) Set On-Entry button and click the link that appears
3. Use the “Class/Group” dropdown to select “All of Nrsry” or a specific Nursery class
4. Tick boxes for the pupils you wish to create a starting point for
5. Press Move Ticks
6. Read the message and tick the box to confirm you have understood the warning
7. Confirm the operation

For more information, please see Setting Baseline & On-Entry.
 
We hope this is clear and helpful, but as always, we’re here to help – if you have any questions, please contact our Support Team.
 
Adam Wilkinson, Support Team

So, the new curriculum has been unveiled and is now out for consultation. There’s a great deal to unpack. From the introduction of Progression Steps, through the achievement outcomes themselves to the proposed new assessment arrangements, there is a great deal of depth and detail that the Assessment Foundation is very pleased to see. It’s a tribute to all those who have been working on the new curriculum and assessment arrangements since the publication of Successful Futures in 2015.

On the day of the release our Chief Executive, Dr Philip Dixon, was quoted in the Western Mail:

"Today is a start to the process of putting meat on the bones of the principles and purposes outlined in Successful Futures and elsewhere. The 'What Matters' statements will help schools to frame their curriculum offer. Key to this will be the new national model which the Welsh Government will be producing. But equally key will be the resources - in terms of both time and money - that will be available to teachers to develop this new curriculum. The workforce are crucial to its success. The new assessment regime will also need careful examination and robust critique to ensure that its main purpose is centred unequivocally on learning"

It must be remembered that these reforms are concerned with curriculum and assessment. There are some salient points within the documentation that are of especial interest:

• The LNF and DCF will remain available to support teachers across the curriculum, and work is being carried out to align them with the Progression Steps.
• Progression Steps are emphatically not for the purpose of summative assessment! Achievement outcomes are written in the form of 'I can' and 'I have' statements, putting the learner at the heart of the assessment process.
• There will be a Baseline assessment at Reception that will "build upon" the current Foundation Phase Profile to provide an on-entry assessment that supports the new curriculum.
• Routes for Learning will remain available for assessment of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties.

It’s particularly notable that the draft assessment arrangements are at pains to point out what the purpose of assessment isn’t - broad, brush stroke judgements of a child’s ability, used for accountability purposes. The Assessment Foundation is very pleased to see that the main emphasis of the document is loudly and repeatedly in favour of formative assessment.

Whilst we look forward to the introduction of the new curriculum, it is important to remember that for the time being, the current assessment and reporting arrangements (Outcomes and Levels) remain fully in place until 2022. The new curriculum and associated requirements will be rolled out to schools as follows:

Many of our supporters in Wales have been in touch regarding our plans for Successful Futures and the implementation of the new curriculum. We’ve always planned to implement a new, formative online assessment that aligns with the updated curriculum, and now we are happy to be able to see some of the detail and begin our preparations. We will be trialling our ideas on the finalised curriculum from 2020 onwards, and seeking feedback from schools to aid the development of our new assessment tool. It follows that a curriculum designed by schools should be served by an assessment tool designed for those same schools. We look forward to working with you!