NTS Assessments, PiRA and PUMA: What are the differences?

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

NTS, PiRA, PUMA, GAPS

After talking and listening to teachers, like you, about how we can help to make your life a little easier whilst providing insightful performance and progress data and familiarising pupils with the SATs, we are very pleased to launch NTS Assessments: our brand new termly, standardised, National Test-style progress tests for Years 1 to 6. As excitement builds for NTS Assessments (National Test-style Standardised Assessments), many of you are asking about the differences between these new papers and our popular existing standardised tests: PiRA and PUMA. We’ve written this article to help answer your questions. Continue reading →

Our new partnership with Groupcall Analytics makes GAPS, PiRA and PUMA data integration easier than ever before

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

Our new partnership with Groupcall Analytics

We are pleased to announce our new partnership with Groupcall Analytics, which will benefit GAPS, PiRA and PUMA customers using MARK, our free online assessment and reporting tool. This partnership with Groupcall Analytics will provide our customers with a time-saving solution for MIS data integration, providing increased options for enhanced data analysis.

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The Power of Pairs

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

Consolidating and extending learning opportunities with peer partner work in the classroom

Thanks to Ruth Duckworth, Year 6 teacher and Writing Lead, and Kate Sanghera, Year 6 teacher and Science lead, from Christchurch CE Primary School for the following article.

Some assessments focusing on pupils’ ability to ‘speak and listen’ effectively have diminished recently – especially with the reduction in teacher assessments required to be reported at the end of key stage two.  This should not mean, however, that we begin to lose sight of the valuable contribution which paired oral language opportunities, work tasks and challenges, as well as peer assessments can make in both consolidating and moving on children’s learning.  The benefits of mixed-ability paired groupings can be particularly effective for all learners.

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New partnership between our standardised tests and Arbor’s cloud-based MIS

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

We are delighted to announce the new partnership between our standardised tests for primary schools and Arbor’s cloud-based MIS for schools & MATs.

Our standardised tests for primary schools

Our standardised tests, PiRA and PUMA, are a key component of many primary school improvement strategies, helping key stakeholders to track pupils’ in-year progress and benchmark against age-related expectations.

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The effects of age, gender and school type of primary maths and reading attainment

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

From Katie Blainey, Publishing Director, RS Assessment from Hodder Education

Thousands of primary schools are now using PiRA and PUMA to get rich termly data that highlights pupils’ strengths and weaknesses, which helps support tailored teaching and learning throughout primary school years. In the last few years MARK (My Assessment and Reporting Kit) has become an increasingly popular support for schools to enter their test results and quickly analyse data for pupils, classes and the whole school. As the number of results in the MARK database increased we wanted to see if any trends were emerging at an aggregated level, as we know large data sets of this size are rare.

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Ofsted and the 2019 Framework: Paradigm Shift or Cosmetic Respray?

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

In September 2019, the Ofsted inspection framework will change, but what does that mean for assessment?

Thanks to John Dabell, trained teacher and former Ofsted inspector, for the following article.

Although work is ongoing, and Ofsted is still preparing for the 2019 changes, there are some signs we can draw on which help shed some light on what the future holds.

Ofsted strategy: 2017-2022

Ofsted reminds us in it 2017-2022 strategy that everything it does is first and foremost to champion the interests of children and students, acting as a ‘force for improvement through intelligent, responsible and focused inspection and regulation.’  It also tells us that it is nimble and adaptable to change and does not have preferred styles of teaching. Continue reading →

New Pre-key Stage Standards: What schools need to know

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

Thanks to Sarah Minty, Commissioning Editor for SEN at RS Assessment from Hodder Education, for the following article.

Following a government consultation on the Rochford Review, the pre-key stage standards, which have been in place for 2017/2018, are now final, after a review by teachers and other educational experts.

From summer 2019, teachers must use these pre-key stage standards to make statutory assessment judgements at the end of KS1 and KS2, for any pupils who are working below the national curriculum teacher assessment frameworks and above P scale 4. Continue reading →

Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: green paper

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

Between December 2017 and March 2018 the Department for Education and the Department of Health & Social Care held a public consultation on ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’.  The consultation received 2,700 responses and on 25th July 2018 the DfE published a green paper focusing on earlier intervention and prevention in schools.

 

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Reducing teacher workload

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

On 21st July 2018, the DfE released advice and tools to help school leaders and teachers review and reduce workload.

 

Background – The workload challenge

In October 2014 the DfE launched the workload challenge, where teachers were asked to share their views on how to reduce unnecessary workload.  Over 44,000 people responded to the survey, highlighting 3 main areas that can cause unnecessary workload – marking, planning and data management.

Read a full summary of the workload challenge here.

 

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KS2 National Test Results 2018

By RS Assessment from Hodder Education Comment Closed

On 10th July 2018, the DfE published the results of the 2018 Key Stage 2 National Tests.

Summary of the 2018 results

  • 64% of pupils reached the expected standard in all of reading, writing and maths (combined).  This has increased from last year but remains below the floor standard of 65%.
  • The raw scores required to reach the expected standard have increased for all subjects.  The largest increase can be seen in maths, increasing from 57 in 2017 to 61 this year.
  • The average scaled score in reading has increased, while the scaled score in maths and GPS remains the same as last year.

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