Key Stage 5 Assessment

Target Setting KS5                                          

All teachers of A-Level and Level 3 Vocational qualifications will be given teaching group lists with Average Point Score (GCSE) data and a Level 3 target grade from ALPS (reported by DfE and used by Ofsted for inspection purposes).  These targets appear on the Student Progress Reports which go home to parents in years 12, 13 and 14.  Based on a student’s GCSE grades an average point score is calculated, by adding up all the grades they achieved and dividing this by the number of grades they achieved.  The student’s average point score is compared against the outcomes from previous year’s national exam result data set a target that would achieve a result in the top 25% nationally. 

Assessment KS5 

In Year 12, 13 and 14 the grading is A*-E for A-level subjects and Pass to Distinction* for Vocational subjects. Current grades are awarded according to the combination of the assessment criteria and grade descriptors for a particular task. In some cases Key Assessment Tasks (KATs) may use some, rather than all, aspects of a grade descriptor task.  

Although subjects differ in the nature of their assessments, in all subjects there is a requirement to acquire skills and content to be learnt and applied. The way these can be broken down for assessment purposes is through the use of the assessment objectives for each subject 

Students will be made familiar with overarching assessment objectives and assessment criteria to achieve target grades within their lessons so that they can take ownership of the specific skill or area of content which they may need to improve on.  

Assessment Points KS5 

Assessment point reports are published three times during the course of the academic year. The timings of these reports and the evidence used to identify the grades for each Year group are detailed in Table 1 below.  

For students in Year 12 an a Red, Amber and Green (RAG) report is also produced for each of the subjects they take at the end of the first four weeks. This RAG of the students is based on their attitude to the work in lessons and highlights the need for additional support that some students may require at the start of their courses. At each assessment point teachers provide both a current and a predicted grade. These are both fine graded to provide further detail on how comfortably they sit at that grade. 

Students will also receive an ‘on track indicator’ for each subject with each assessment report. The predicted fine attainment grade is compared to the end of KS5 target grade and if it is below the on track indicator will be T-, if it is the same it will be T and if it is above it will be T+. This allows both parents and the school to identify very quickly where a student’s areas of weakness are and enables the swift implementation of any necessary intervention.  

Table 1