Assessment and Reporting in English

Assessment

Assessment can be used to provide information to direct teaching, provide feedback to students about progress or contribute to reporting. Although all of these are valid uses of assessment, they require different emphasises in assessment.

A resource for schools, the Consistent Teacher Judgement in Action website has been revised to reflect the Curriculum Programming and Planning, Assessing and Reporting K-12 policy. Its aim is to help establish the understandings necessary to ensure that consistent teacher judgements about student achievement can occur across all key learning areas.

What is assessment?

Assessment is the process of identifying, gathering and interpreting information about students' learning. The central purpose of assessment is to provide information on student achievement and progress and set the direction for ongoing teaching and learning.

Schools are to undertake assessment to collect information about students’ learning. This will occur through both formal and informal activities.

Consistency of assessment in English PowerPoint
A presentation for teacher professional learning about consistency in assessment in English.

What is consistency?

Consistency in relation to assessment occurs when teachers are able to make judgements about student learning that are not dependent on the individual teacher, student, location or time and are based on a shared understanding of syllabus standards of learning. Establishing procedures and structures to provide sufficient time on a regular basis for teacher discussion about teaching, learning and assessment is the key to enhancing consistency.

Consistency of teacher judgement in English PowerPoint
A PowerPoint presentation for teacher professional learning about achieving consistency of teacher judgement in English.

What is moderation?

Moderation is a process where teachers compare judgements to either confirm or adjust them. The process involves close collaboration to establish a shared understanding of what achievement of syllabus standards looks like and whether or not the student has demonstrated achievement of the syllabus standard. Teachers work towards making judgements that are consistent and comparable.

Consistency of moderation in English PowerPoint
A PowerPoint presentation for teacher professional learning about consistency of assessment in English.

Assessment and Reporting Resources

	Consistent Teacher Judgement Consistent Teacher Judgement in Action – A resource for schools has been revised to reflect the Curriculum Programming and Planning, Assessing and Reporting K-12 policy. Its aim is to help establish the understandings necessary to ensure that consistent teacher judgements about student achievement can occur across all key learning areas. Downloadable powerpoint presentations for teachers on Consistency in practice, Moderation in practice and Assessment of learning are available on this website
	Curriculum Planning, Programming, Assessing & Reporting to parents K-12 This website provides information to support parents, teachers and school leaders in understanding the requirements of new policy in curriculum planning and programming, assessing and reporting to parents and in planning for implementation
	English 7-12 Syllabus Advice on Programming and Assessment (PDF)
	Assessment and Resource Centre (BOS)

Developing Reports for Years 7-10 English

The following tables demonstrate one way in which the objectives and outcomes defined in the NSW Years 7-10 English Syllabus can be translated into learning strands suitable for use in Years 7-10 reports.

Of the five objectives in the Years 7-10 English Syllabus, the last three are specific enough to stand alone as report learning strands, but the first two are so broad that they can be conveniently split between “responding” (i.e. reading, listening and viewing) and “composing” (i.e. writing, speaking and representing). Such an approach produces seven report learning strands, a workable number against which to report, but also, importantly, reflecting all Syllabus outcomes. The language of the learning strands strikes a balance between two purposes: capturing the rigour of the Years 7-10 English Syllabus and providing accessibility to students and parents.

Report Strands and comment starters can be downloaded from the Curriculum Planning, Assessing and Reporting to parents webpage.

Stage 4 Report Strands and comment starters
Stage 5 Report Strands and comment starters

The last column in each table above lists some useful report starters that relate to each particular learning strand in the report. Teachers need to use the name of the student or an appropriate pronoun to provide a subject for each sentence. They can then modify the sentence to suit the child by using adjectives, adverbs or additional phrases or clauses. Sentences can also be combined with one another.

e.g. Tom enthusiastically composes texts for a range of purposes, audiences and contexts, but he needs to check the accuracy of grammar, spelling and punctuation, particularly by using dictionaries, thesauruses and other resources to ensure that writing is meaningful.

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